Working on a Case
by freddylloyd
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? After the "Family Lost" collection.
1. Agent R

Chapter 1

**Agent R**

I dash around the Tower for a whole forty seconds looking for Tim before I find him in tatami room working on his karate stuff, and then I run in and shove the piece of paper into his hand and say: "'Urgent!' This fax says, 'Urgent!' And it's for you, right? 'Cause you're still the Titans' 'Agent R' even though Raven's back, right?"

"Right," says Tim. He looks at the page and then turns it over and looks at the other side even though that side is all blank. "Uh, Bart? This is the cover page."

"Oh?"

"Where's the rest of the fax?"

"Oh!" So I sprint back up to the Communications Room and grab the other pages off the tray and run them back down to Tim. "What's it say now?"

"It says, 'Page 1 of 17,'" says Tim, "so there are eight more coming after these—no, not yet!" Tim grabs my arm with his free hand. "It'll take another minute to finish coming through."

And I'm thinking, "A whole minute!" and wriggling around and Tim starts talking again as if that would ever distract me, except that I start thinking about what he's saying and forget about the fax for a minute and finally he says, "The rest of the pages should have arrived by now."

And I dash up to the ComRoom and grab the pages and dash back to the stairs, and all the while I'm thinking about what Tim was saying about the U.S. Marshals bringing a new prisoner with powers to Alcatraz and how the Titans have to be ready to guard him, and I'm also thinking about how the Marshals send their stuff to Agent R, and how if I learn to be a detective like Tim then they'd send their stuff to Agent KF! And then I'm at the bottom of the stairs, and there's nothing but pipes and vents and cables and emergency generators, and I have to run back up to hand Tim the rest of the pages.

"Thanks," he says. "You went down to the basement again, didn't you?"

"How did you—"

"You're tracking concrete dust on the mats," says Tim, and I look and I am, so I take off my shoes and toss them in the corner beside Tim's Robin boots, and I think about how annoying Tim can be when he does his detective stuff and how much I'd like to be able to do that, too.

And I look at Tim again, and he's frowning at the papers, and even though he's wearing his mask I know his eyes are flicking back and forth over the words, and I make a deduction by myself and I say, "Something's wrong! There's something strange about this prisoner!"

"Uh huh," mutters Tim, still reading.

"Ooh, it's a case! Lemme work with you! Last month I read twenty-four books about how to be a detective."

Tim says, "You really want to investigate this case?"

"Yeah!"

And he slaps the whole fax—all seventeen pages—in my hand. "Read the file."

So I stare at the pile and groan. "Come on, Tim!"

"You'll absorb all the details, Bart."

"But you already read this stuff! Can't you tell me the important—"

"Part of being a detective, Bart, is spotting what's important," says Tim, and he goes back to practicing his karate moves as if I'm going to start reading the pages just because he says so, but I show him because I wait till he's finished three kicks before I get bored and start reading the pages.

So it's a U.S. Marshals case file all about this guy named Eli Crossley who's in prison for breaking into a bank vault in Texas and the only interesting thing is that he cut his way into the vault _with his fingernails_, which I deduce is why beside his name on the first page of the file it says, "Eli Crossley, alias Cross Cut."

I get to the last page about how the Marshals are flying him into San Francisco tomorrow, and Tim asks if I see what's important yet, so I tell him, "Please. I'm reading," and I review the whole fax in my mind to be sure. Eli Crossley is thirty-four years old, and he has brown hair, and he has no family, and he has lots of little scars, and he has a metagene that gives him incredibly sharp thumbnails that can even cut through diamonds, and after he was caught robbing the bank he got put in federal prison for twenty-two months, and that was seventeen months ago and then last week the guards found a sharpened toothbrush in his cell—

"Aha! A shiv! That's prison slang for an improvised cutting weapon, derived from the Romani word—"

"I know what a shiv is," says Tim.

"Okay, so the guards found a shiv that Crossley made out of a toothbrush, and the federal prison system has a rule that any inmate with a metagene who breaks any rule has to go into the SIS!" (That means Special Incarceration System, which for half the country means Alcatraz, but I know Tim already knows that and since we're working on a case together we can use that sort of detective jargon—)

"And why is the toothbrush important?" Tim asks.

"Um. Because it was against the rules?"

Tim shakes his head. "Logic, Bart. Why would Eli Crossley sharpen a toothbrush?"

"For protection," I say, remembering the seventeen books I read about incarceration, and I slow down to explain to Tim: "The rate of personal assaults in prisons is more than twice the rate in even the communities with the most crimes, and improvised weapons are found in 84 percent of prison searches."

"The latest statistic is 92 percent," says Tim, "but that's not the point. Why would a man who naturally grows blades sharp enough to cut through titanium steel need to make a shiv?"

"Oh," I say, and I feel like I should have donkey's ears growing out of my skull. But I decide to try harder at this detective stuff so I read all the pages again, quick so Tim doesn't notice, even though I know he does notice, and I don't see anything new and I'm trying to think why Crossley would make himself a shiv when he knew he might get caught and he knew what would happen if he got caught and—

"Tim! He knew what would happen if he got caught! He _wanted_ to be brought to Alcatraz!"

"A definite possibility," says Tim, and he starts pulling on his boots, so I put on my shoes again, and then he finishes with his boots and straps on his cape and heads for the door. "We need to find out more about Eli Crossley."


	2. Metadata

Chapter 2

**Metadata**

I know Tim is heading to the Computer Room, so I run ahead of him there, but then he doesn't show up, so I run back, and I see the elevator's going up so I _deduce_ that Tim's heading to the helipad, and I run up to meet him on the roof, but then he doesn't show up, and it's all dark and rainy, so I run back down and all around the inside of the tower until I find him in his room plugging his laptop into the phone hole in the wall.

"Hey!" I say. "You didn't tell me you were going here!"

"You didn't ask," he says, and before I can say something that smart back, he adds, "Bart, you want to tell Vic we're working on the Crossley case?"

"Yeah!" So I sprint out of the room and back down the stairs, and I find Cyborg in his lab trying out some new telescope thingie, and I say, "Robin says we're working on the Crossley case!"

"All right," says Cyborg, almost as if this isn't any news at all.

"'We're working' means I'm working with Tim!"

"All right," says Cyborg again, still looking through his tube.

"Eli Crossley? Alias Cross Cut? The prisoner coming to Alcatraz tomorrow?"

"I know the name, Bart," says Vic. "An hour ago I asked Tim to find out more about him."

"Oh." And I'm thinking, if Cyborg already knows, then why did Tim send me down to tell him, unless—

"You wanted me out of the room!" I yell at Tim.

Calmly, he looks up from his computer and says, "You figured that out a minute faster than I expected."

And, just as calmly, I scream, "But—but—but why?"

"I had to log into Batman's databank," Tim says, and he goes back to typing. "I can't let anyone see the procedure. Even Titans."

"But we're working on this case! Together!"

"Batman's databank, Batman's rules."

"But I've even visited the batcave!"

"That was an emergency. Batman wasn't around. And he didn't know that you remember everything you read." Tim looks up at me with a little smile. "Now he's got more respect for your abilities, which means he thinks you're more dangerous. If you want Batman to change his rules, you'll have to talk to him."

"Oh," I say, trying to figure that all out, and then I don't say anything for a whole twenty seconds until Tim's computer twitters like a little bird to say it's done downloading, and he unplugs the cord and turns the screen so I can see it. I grab a chair from my room and run back and sit next to Tim, and we're back to working on the case together, and I don't have to think about talking to Batman anymore.

"Crossley has a much longer criminal record than the Marshals think," says Tim, pointing at the top of the screen. "Two juvenile offenses—"

"Juvenile offenses are supposed to be purged from people's records."

"Batman's files don't work that way," says Tim. "Crossley's power didn't manifest itself until he was in his late teens, according to his detention-hall medical file."

I start to say that I read about how medical files are confidential, too, but I _deduce_ that Batman doesn't care about that, either, and Tim is still talking.

"Crossley was convicted at age nineteen of a jewelry-store break-in and spent twenty months in Oklahoma prison. He was out for three years, then got caught in a bank robbery and went into the federal system for four years. Here are links to the files of his four accomplices. One is dead now, and one is in the Arkansas system, and two..."

I'm trying really hard to focus on what's important, and Tim isn't helping as he keeps talking and makes his computer screen roll up and points to some new lines and keeps talking some more: "Special Ops in the Justice Department started to track Crossley after he got out of prison the second time. They had him down as a suspect in fourteen break-ins and robberies, but must not have gathered enough evidence to make an arrest. And then Batman's databank is blank until Crossley's back in custody for the burglary he's paying for now. You see what's weird about that, Bart?"

And I wake up with a jump, and I look at all the lines on Tim's screen again, and I say, "He, like, didn't do anything for six years."

"Didn't do anything that landed on his record," Tim says. "He must have been doing something, somewhere. What's more, at the end of that time, as far as JSO is concerned, Crossley had never been in jail before. Something big happened in there."

Tim takes the laptop and starts typing, and I'm twisting my head and trying to see 'cause this time he didn't send me out of the room, but it's all in code so I finally ask, "What are you doing now?"

"Looking at the metadata," Tim says.

"Is that, like, info about people with metagenes?"

"No, it's data about the data. Like when records came into Batman's databank, and when people accessed them, and—There we are."

And I look real close at the screen and all I see is a line that says:

ACC REM B1 20000805 15:34:32 DYR455 16584156481.

So I don't know any more than before.

"That's the metadata from the last time Batman looked up Crossley's file, just before the six-year gap," Tim says.

So I look more closely for what's important, and I still don't see anything, even when I grab my hair and grit my teeth, and I finally ask Tim, "So what does that mean?"

"Batman accessed his databank remotely, using a particular Dayton R455."

"Will you just tell me what that means?" I yell.

"It means Batman was logging on from the Justice League cave."

"Our cave? In Rhode Island? Cool!"

"Yup. And that must mean...," and Tim looks at me as if he expects me to know, and I can tell he really does expect me to know, and I'm thinking as fast as I can—

"Batman was working on a case with the Justice League!"

"Exactly," Tim says, and he smiles.

And I start to think I can do this detective stuff after all, so I jump up and say, "So the Justice League was hunting for Crossley, and since they're the Justice League they probably _found _Crossley, and then his records got erased, and... How does that fit together? And what does that have to do with his toothbrush?"

"I don't know," says Tim, "but next we have to find out what the Justice League did on that case." Tim snaps shut his laptop and opens his closet and pulls out a motorcycle helmet that's all red and green with an R on it, and I think about how Tim always has the best stuff, and then he's saying, "...you carry me to—"

"To the cave?" I say, and start to grab him, but he pushes off me and jumps away.

"No, Bart, not the cave. It's all gone, remember? We've got to go to Desert Falls, Nevada."


	3. Penetrators

Chapter 3

**Penetrators**

Tim has his grapple thingie hooked on the top of this two-story concrete building in Desert Falls, Nevada, and he's hanging fifteen feet up the wall next to this metal box, and then a giant pink fly swatter comes over the edge of the roof and—SPLAT!—smushes Tim against the wall.

"Gotcha!" says a voice, and a pink face with big black sunglasses and a big grin pops over the edge of the roof.

"Eep," says Tim, his voice all muffled. "Plastic Man, it's Robin."

"Yeah, kid, I recognized you through the security camera before I teleported down," says Plastic Man, and he lifts one leg over the roof and all the way down to the ground, and turns the fly swatter into a barrel and carries Tim down to the ground with him.

Tim's not trying to wriggle loose, and he's keeping his voice all cool and even as he says, "I'm working on a case."

"Oh, is that what you kids call breaking into a JLA building now?"

"You can ask Batman if you want."

"I do want," says Plastic Man, and he makes himself into one of those big red phone booths you see in England, except so small that Tim's stuck tight inside, and Plastic Man makes himself a head at the top of the booth and pokes his JLA communicator out of his shoulder and punches some buttons with his earlobe.

"Hey, Ba—Got his voicemail, don't you hate that? . . . Hey, Bats! It's Plas, how ya doing? It's about, oh, one-forty in the morning here, and DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR ROBIN IS? Take a guess. . . No. . . Getting warmer, but no. . . Oh, I'll just tell you. Two minutes ago he was climbing up the side of the JLA documents facility in Nevada! The kid says he's working on a case, but I figure if that was true I'd be seeing your smiling face by now, am I right? Sooooo, gimme a ring-a-ding-ding, and I'll keep your boy out of trouble until we talk. Buh-bye!"

And Plastic Man's communicator disappears inside him again, and he turns back into himself except he makes his right hand look like a suitcase with Tim's head stuck out one side and his boots hanging out of the other. "No use hanging around in the dark, kiddo. If you're good, I'll let you watch the last half of the game with me."

Plastic Man walks to the front door of the building, swinging Tim at his side. There's a scanner thingie beside the door, and Plastic Man puts his left hand over the screen and says, "I think tonight I'll use _Aquaman's_ palm print—after all, he's not using it anymore! Ha, HA! (Don't ever tell him I said that, kid.)" And a little green light turns on beside the scanner, and the door slides open.

And that's why I've been crouching behind the shrubs in front of the dentist's office across the street! I run full speed past Plastic Man and through the open door and into the lobby, and then I zip around 'til I find the stairs 'cause Tim told me all the document storage rooms are underground, and I run down two flights and flick on the lights, and I'm in a room with rows and rows and rows of gray metal file cabinets—I'm in the Justice League archives!

And I find the file cabinet with the right dates, and I'm looking for the folders for the case that the JLA was working when Batman downloaded his data on Eli Crossley, and of course they were working on six different cases that week, but finally I find Crossley's name! And it's in a bunch of files labeled PENETRATORS GANG! And I pull out all of those files and I spread them around on a table like a detective and—

"Who left this light on—AAAAAAH!" And Plastic Man's head is sticking through the doorway, making a big screamy face, and then one of his hands slides into the room, and I back all the way to the wall and zip around a row of cabinets and down that aisle, but then a pink foot's coming at me from that direction, and Plastic Man is yelling, "What is it with you rugrats tonight?"

And I grab the foot and the hand and I try to tie them together in one of the knots I read about in a Scout book, but I never did that before, and Plastic Man starts to untangle himself and he's yelling, "Why aren't you at the mall like normal teenaged crime-fighters?"

And now Plastic Man's poking his face around the aisle and he's reaching for me from both sides again, so I run up the side of the cabinets and jump to the next row and the next, and Plastic Man's other arm finally drags Tim down the stairs and stands him on his feet beside the light switch so he can go after me, and Tim says:

"We're working on a case."

"A case? All your little pal's doing is making a mess of our stuff!"

And I look behind me, and I see PENETRATORS GANG papers swirling in the air.

"We'll leave everything exactly where it was," says Tim, and I dash over to the papers and grab them out of the air and slap them back down on the table, and while I'm sorting them into the right piles—most of them, anyway—Tim says: "We need to see something in the JLA files. The sooner Kid Flash can get to work, the sooner we'll be out of your hair."

Plastic Man makes his hair dance around in all sorts of crazy shapes and says, "Don't kid a kidder, kiddo! You just want to get outta here before Batman calls me back!"

"Kid Flash is a fast reader," Tim says, and I can tell that he's saying that loud enough for me to hear, too, to remind me what the rest of my assignment is, so I yank a stool over to the table and sit down and start reading the PENETRATORS GANG file. "And you know he's too fast for you to catch, Plastic Man."

And I'm reading about how Eli Crossley linked up with a bunch of other crooks who specialized in breaking into places that nobody else could get into, like big bank vaults, and nuclear research facilities, and military bases, and movie sets, and they called themselves the Penetrators.

"I don't need to catch your pal," Plastic Man is telling Tim. "I already got a bird in the hand, _Robin_. And as for _Impulse_—I recognized the little guy's hair the second I saw it swaying in the breeze—all I have to do is distract him."


	4. It's Only Plastic Man

Chapter 4

**It's Only Plastic Man**

As fast as I can, I'm reading the JLA files about the other Penetrators that Eli Crossley started working with. There's a lady named Pulse, who could feel any electrical current, so she could fool alarm systems, and there was a man named Combo, who didn't have any powers but had invented stuff for all the big lock companies so he knew how to get through their locks, and there was a little guy named Sluggo who was a contortionist and could squeeze himself through openings or hide inside—

"I mean," Plastic Man tells Tim, "to distract your pal all I have to do is _this_."

And I know I shouldn't look up, but by the time I tell myself that I've already looked up, and there's a clown with frizzy black hair and a white face and a big red nose and red and black checkered pants and a pink cream pie that he puts—SPLOOP!—right into Tim's face. And he pulls down the pie, and pink stuff is smeared all over Tim's mask and nose and chin with bits hanging off onto the pie plate, and the clown has a big silly grin and a pink bulb in his other hand that he makes go Honk! Honk!

And Tim reaches up and peels the gunk off his face in one piece, and it snaps back into the rest of the pie, and Tim says, "It's only Plastic Man."

And the clown's face starts turning back into Plastic Man's, and the bulb of the horn turns back into his right hand, and the pink pie turns back into his left hand, and he says, "_Only _Plastic Man? Puh-leaze!"

And I go back to reading about Cross Cut and Pulse and Combo and Sluggo—what kind of villain is named Sluggo?—and then I see a paper from Batman reporting how he believes that the Penetrators have another member, maybe even their leader, called the Insider, who specializes in getting inside organizations like banks or research labs and helping the gang plan their break-ins, but that no one knows who the Insider is, maybe not even the gang thems—

"GrraaaAAAA," says something near the door, and I know I shouldn't look up, but I do, and there's a vampire ghoul with stringy black hair and long white teeth and blank black eyes, and he's got one hand with long pointy fingernails around Tim's neck and his other arm is stuck _inside Tim's chest_, rooting around, and then he yanks that arm out, and holds it up for me, and in that hand is a dark red heart muscle that's STILL BEATING!

"It's only Plastic Man," Tim says. "There's no hole in my chest, and there's no blood dripping on the floor."

"Curses, foiled again," rasps the ghoul, and he starts turning back into Plastic Man. "And another minute has passed."

And I'm reading even faster about how Batman told the Justice League he'd snuck into four military research bases and installed new security systems with laser sensors 'cause none of the Penetrators could stop lasers, and the JLA shouldn't tell anyone what he'd done so the Insider wouldn't find out, and—

"Hey, there, little man! I like my lovers as _fast_ as I am."

And I look up again, even though I _know I really shouldn't_, and there's a lady in a red dress that barely covers her breasts or her bottom, licking her red lips and drooping her long, silky black hair over Tim's shoulders and pushing her breasts against the side of his head, and she says, "Wouldn't you boys like to show a lady a good time?" And I'm staring at her with my mouth open 'cause I've never seen anything like—

"It's only Plastic Man," Tim says. "And it's...kind of creepy."

And Plastic Man zips back into his regular shape, looking the other way and whistling as if nothing happened.

And I go back to reading—I really, really concentrate this time—about how one day the Penetrators tripped the laser sensors at Molineux Air Force Base, and an alarm went off in the JLA cave, and the Flash—my grandfather!—was the first one to respond, and he wrapped the gang up in electrical cords, but Crossley cut them out, but then Hawkman and Black Canary arrived, and there was a fight, the JLA members captured everyone, and then some JSO agents showed up and took the Penetrators into custody, and I'm looking at the official JLA report on that day, and it's _signed by Grandpa Barry!_

"All right, Kid Flash, what are you up to now?"

And I look up and it's the Flash in his red uniform with one foot out to stop himself after he's run over from Keystone City, and, even though Wally doesn't look as grumpy as usual, I feel my throat go dry and I choke out, "I—I—"

"It's only Plastic Man," says Tim. "He doesn't know your real name."

"Why, of course I know that Kid Flash's real name is...Impulse."

"You're only Plastic Man!" I yell.

And suddenly the Flash is Plastic Man again, and he turns his mouth into a bullhorn and shouts in Tim's ear, "You're the most! Annoying! Sidekick! EVER! My Flash fools the guy's own _cousin_, for Pete's sake, and you're talking details! I'd like to see you—"

But Tim ignores him and puts a finger to his ear and talks into the air: "Robin here. . . . Yes, at the JLA records depository. Titans business."

"Hey, you're talking to Batman, aren't you?" says Plastic Man. "Let me talk. Where's the mike?" He taps the top of Tim's head and shouts, "Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Can you hear me, Bats? That Impulse kid broke in, too!"

"Kid Flash," says Tim.

"Whatever! Bats, we got kid heroes coming out of the woodwork here, and it's a concrete building! I'm—"

"Batman said he'll call you on the JLA communicator in ninety seconds," Tim tells Plastic Man.

So Plastic Man pops his communicator out of his hand and tosses it in the air and catches it and says, "All rightie, then! He's probably mulling over your punishment. My guess? Double-secret probation."

"I don't think so," says Tim, and I see his forehead is wrinkled. "Batman could have patched you into the conversation by hitting a couple of buttons; I've showed him how. I think right now he's talking to someone else."

"Who?" I say.

"Yeah. Who? Who?" says Plastic Man, making his head look like an owl and twisting it all the way around.

And then a red blur zooms down the staircase, and the Flash is standing beside Tim, looking even more grumpy than usual, and he grumbles, "All right, Bart, what are you up to now?"


	5. Most Annoying Sidekick Ever

Chapter 5

**Most Annoying Sidekick Ever **

So I explain to Wally exactly why he found us inside the Justice League archive: "I'm—Robin said—It's not like—Titans need—"

"We're working on a case," says Tim.

And meanwhile Plastic Man is hitting his forehead and saying, "Bart! Bart! How hard is that name to remember?" but then his communicator buzzes, and Flash taps the one in his ear, and I know Batman's called them all back.

"Robin here," says Tim, and he pokes some buttons on his shoulder pads and adds, "I'm patching in Kid Flash on the Titans frequency."

And the next thing I hear is Batman's voice growling from my earpiece: "—didn't say you should patch in—"

"Kid Flash, can you hear us now?" says Robin.

"Um...yes," I say, and I can hear Batman breathing hard, which is kind of scary, even over the phone, 'cause you _never _hear Batman breathing hard.

"Good," says Tim, and behind his back Plastic Man turns his black hair and sunglasses into pointy ears and a mask, and he makes his chin as square as a box, and he glares at the back of Robin's head through the white slits in his mask and mouths the words _Most...annoying...sidekick...ever!_

"Kid Flash and I came out here to check the JLA files on...," Tim is saying, but instead of listening Wally is snickering at Plastic Man, and then he shakes his head and points his thumb at me to tell Plastic Man _I'm _the most annoying sidekick ever, and I make an angry face back at him 'cause that's totally unfair since I was _never _his sidekick 'cause he never _let me _be his sidekick even when I _wanted_—

"Pay attention!" barks Batman in everyone's ears.

Wally and I straighten up, and Plastic Man says, "We _are_ paying attention, Bats."

"No, you're still pretending to be me," Batman tells him.

And suddenly Plastic Man looks like Plastic Man again, but his head is twirling around on his neck as he peers at every corner of the room. "How—"

"Through the security cameras," says Batman.

Flash and I look at each other with big eyes, and Plastic Man untwirls and whispers to Tim, "How can you stand to work with this guy?"

"Who do you think hacked into the monitor system for me?" Batman answers. "Now listen to what Robin has to say."

And Tim starts explaining again, with that tiny smile he gets when he's done something really smart, and he explains how the SIS told us Titans that they were transferring a new prisoner to Alcatraz named Eli Crossley—

"Cross Cut," Batman growls. "One of the Penetrators."

—and how Crossley served two terms in prison and was suspected in fourteen robberies, and then he disappeared for six years, and then he was arrested again and sentenced to twenty-two months—

"Twenty-two months for a three-time loser?" says Plastic Man, and he puts two white stripes through his black hair and makes his pompadour twitch like a tail. "Something stinks in there."

—and how we looked into the JLA files and found more information on Crossley, which Kid Flash is going to explain, and then Flash and Plastic Man look at me, and I can hear Batman breathing again, and I realize what Tim just said, and I swallow hard, and I explain:

"Um. . . The files say Cross Cut was part of this gang called the Penetrators. And Batman made a trap for them—a really smart trap!—and the Flash that was my grandfather caught them, along with Hawkman and Black Canary, and then some agents showed up from the Justice Department, so Flash and the others turned Cross Cut and the other Penetrators over to the JSO."

"Flash, find the names of those JSO agents," says Batman.

And as Wally zips to the table, I reel off the names that I read: "Special Agent Matthew Baumhaus, Agent Gordon Ketch, and Dr. Margarethe Sackler."

Tim smiles and nods at me, and I feel like I'm making it as a detective, and then Batman snarls: "Matthew Baumhaus?"

"Yeah. I mean, yes, sir."

"He's right," says Wally. "But I can't find the JSO follow-up report."

"There won't be any follow-up," Batman says. "Baumhaus went rogue. He assembled a secret squad for dark ops—wiretaps, kidnappings, assassinations. The Penetrators were just the sort of criminals he recruited. Baumhaus took custody, cleared their records, and gave them new covers. He called them his Mongoose Squad."

And by now Tim has pieces of his computer hanging out of different parts of his uniform, and he's tapping on the bit on his wrist, and he says, "That explains why Crossley's first convictions don't appear in the Marshals' files anymore."

"I remember the Mongoose Squad," says Wally, zooming over to another file cabinet and coming back with a whole armload of folders. "Green Arrow crowed for weeks about how there really was a secret squad of assassins inside the JSO."

Batman says, "There was an explosives expert—Emmanuel Rush, codenamed Detonator. There was a lock specialist named Bo Harriman. There—"

"Combo!" I say.

And Batman is very quiet for a second before he snarls, "What?"

"Bo Harriman was one of the Penetrators! He knew all about locks, and he called himself Combo. Sir."

"That checks out," says Tim, looking at his little computer display. "So we have a direct link from the Penetrators to the Mongoose Squad. Flash, would you please let Kid Flash read the Mongoose Squad file?"

And when Wally hears Tim, he steps away from the folders on the table, and I sit on the stool again and start reading as fast as I can, 'cause when Tim says things in his _serious _voice, people usually do what he says.

And there are lots of pages, and most of them are legal stuff, and I start to get bored, so I can't help noticing how Plastic Man has made his body into a bench along the wall so Tim and Wally can sit and watch me read. And then Plastic Man makes his lips into one of those big squiggly pipes like Sherlock Holmes's, and he asks, "So how come the great detective didn't catch this Crossley along with the rest of the Mongooses—er, Mongeese?"

"Baumhaus was running other teams," Batman says. "I'm sure of that. And he must have had inside helpers who melted back into the JSO bureaucracy."

"Uh-huh," says Plastic Man, and his sunglasses roll around in a big circle. "Bats, just because you're always right doesn't mean you're not paranoid."

And I know I should probably turn off my earpiece so I can concentrate more, but I like being kind of part of that sort of conversation 'cause I'm usually not, so I keep listening even when Plastic Man is just asking Wally about the score of the game, and it probably takes me an extra minute to read all the papers, but finally I'm done and I slap the last folder shut. "Now what?"

Tim stands up and announces, "Kid Flash and I figured out that Crossley might have engineered his transfer to Alcatraz to link up with someone." And from a secret pocket in his cape he pulls out another sheaf of papers and puts it on the table. "This is a complete list of the prisoners and personnel at Alcatraz. Kid Flash, which name on that list matches someone in the Mongoose Squad file?"

So I read the list, and since it's only seven pages long I finish in five seconds, and then I say, "None of them."

"None?" And Tim is staring at me, and for the first time all day he looks worried.


	6. Brainstorming

Chapter 6

**Brainstorming**

Tim thumbs through the pages he brought from San Francisco to make sure they're all there, and then he says, "Can you read them again, Kid Flash?" And he puts a finger over a spot on his mask and leans close and whispers so even I can barely hear: "Come on, Bart! This is why we're here."

So I read the pages again, and again, and again, and I know Tim wants me to spot a name from the Mongoose Squad, and I wish I did, but I know a good detective sticks with the evidence, and there's no name, so I have to whisper back, "Sorry, Tim! I really don't see anything." And as soon as I shake my head, I can see Wally shaking his head, too, 'cause he's disappointed in me, so I read again and say, "I mean, there are some sort-of-same names, like Michael Williams and Michael Williamson, and there are two psychologists both named Margarethe, and—Say! Don't ladies change their names when they marry?"

And over at the side Plastic Man pokes Wally in the shoulder and says, "Nothing escapes your boy," and Wally pokes Plastic Man back about a thousand times in half a second until Plastic Man stops being a bench and Wally falls on the floor.

But I'm too busy to laugh 'cause I'm telling Tim, "The chief psychologist at Alcatraz is Dr. Margarethe S. Ignatieff, and the psychologist who was working for the JSO back when they picked up the Penetrators was Dr. Margarethe Sackler, and if the S stands for Sackler—"

"I'm on it," growls Batman, and Tim's poking buttons on his wrist, and the rest of us watch to see who gets data first, and I say YES! inside when Tim says:

"The Alcatraz personnel file lists her next of kin as 'Maxim Ignatieff, former husband.' So Ignatieff wasn't her original last name."

"Dr. Sackler was a government witness in the Mongoose Squad inquiry," says Batman.

And then there's a kind of mechanical lady's voice in my ear saying, "Margarethe Sackler. Born Centerville, Ohio, forty-six years ago. Ohio State University, Hudson University Med School, four years in the US Air Force, then joined the Justice Department. She specialized in evaluating criminals' mental stability..."

And I make a Who? face to Tim, and he mouths, "Oracle." And I get all excited 'cause I heard of Oracle a long time ago, and I've seen Tim and Wally talking to Oracle, but they never let me listen, so this is the first time I ever got to hear Oracle, and it's a _her_, and she's talking in _my _ear, too!

"...testified about how Baumhaus recruited his operatives. Paid leave for thirteen months. Four years ago, married Maxim Ignatieff—also a psychologist, born in Yekaterinburg. Five weeks later, she requested a transfer to SIS, District 2—Alcatraz. Marriage broke up after sixteen months. Since then, she's had two promotions and one rise in federal pay grade. She also joined Netflix."

"Testified against Baumhaus," repeats Batman.

"So Crossley might be coming after her for revenge," says Tim.

"Or he might be afraid she has something on him," says Plastic Man.

"Or he might think he has something on her that could get him out of jail," says Wally.

"Or he might be in love with her from seven years ago," I say, "and he finally found out where she is, and...I think it's the revenge thing."

Everybody's quiet for a whole lot of seconds, and then the Oracle voice says, "Is that Impulse?"

"It's Kid Flash," says Tim, "and we're just brainstorming the possibilities. First thing in the morning, we'll talk with Dr. Ignatieff to warn her and find out more. By the time the Marshals bring in Crossley, we'll know what to expect."

"I can move some things around," says Wally, "and be in San Francisco tomorrow." And I _deduce _that he doesn't think we can handle this case, and since he knows all about what a good detective Tim is, he must be worried about _me_, even though he has absolutely no reason to be, and I picture forty-four file cabinets falling onto the Flash as he says, "Plas, what about you?"

"Some of us have lives, Flash-man!" says Plastic Man. "Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. Bats, should we help the kids out?"

Batman just says, "Robin?"

And Tim says, "This is a Titans case."

Plastic Man does a giant shruggy thing with his shoulders and says, "I know when I'm not wanted."

But Wally is still frowning, and he says, "Is anyone else worried about this?"

And the voice in our ears says, "Oracle out," and Tim smiles, and I know we've won, and Crossley is still our case, and all we have to do is figure out what he's up to and stop him, which we've practically done already.

"All right, Kid Flash," says Tim, and he turns for the stairs. "Let's head back to the Tower." And I zoom up the stairs and hold the door open for when he gets there.

But Wally arrives first, and he looks at me and purses his lips, and he says, "You really got something with that speed-reading thing. Barry would be proud." And he's off in a red streak on his way to Central City.

And before I know it Tim is beside me, and then Plastic Man snakes by, and usually I'd ask Plastic Man to turn into different things, like a football or a spring or a trombone, but right now I'm a detective working on a case, so I zip across the street to where Robin left his motorcycle helmet and bring it back to him.

And Plastic Man has his neck stretched to peer at the box on the side of the JLA building, and he calls, "Don't leave yet, Boy Wonder! You still have to fix this security sensor."

But Batman's voice says, "The security system is undamaged."

"Remember, Bats, I caught your boy trying to disable it. And when you bat-types disable something, it stays disabled."

"Robin was simply triggering the system."

"Why would he—"

"In order to summon a JLA member," explains Batman. "He knew exactly when I'd be unavailable this evening, and he calculated that during that time the member would take him into the facility to wait for me. As soon as you opened the door, Kid Flash ran inside. Isn't that so, Robin?"

"Yes," says Tim, and I can see his little smile just before he puts on the helmet and motions for me to pick him up. And Plastic Man makes his teeth as big as cement blocks and starts gnashing them, so I grab Tim and start to run west, and when I glance back, Plastic Man has climbed onto the roof of the building, and he's turned himself into a big black sign with red and white blinking circles that spell out one word at a time:

MOST

ANNOYING

SIDEKICKS

EVER!


	7. White Peaches and Black Pudding

Chapter 7

**White Peaches and Black Pudding **

I'm running back to San Francisco from Desert Falls, and I'm about halfway home, but Tim's wriggling around in my arms, tapping buttons on his communicator and his sleeves, and it's kind of annoying, but of course I don't drop him, 'cause he's my pal and we're working on a case and I'm going about 480 miles an hour. But then he taps my shoulder instead and points to a set of lights off in the flats, so I zoom that way and set Tim down beside a tumbleweed and say, "What?"

"I want to contact Alcatraz," he says as he yanks off his helmet, "and I can't get a good signal out here. I should've called before we left."

And down the street I see a silver building with a shiny sign on top that says **GU**Y'**S DI**NE**R – Op**en** 24 Ho**u**rs** and a blue sign by the front door that says **Pay Phone Inside**. So I grab Tim and run over there and set him down, and he coughs and mutters something about warning him next time. And then I have to run back and fetch his helmet which he dropped, but you don't hear _me_ complaining about _him_.

And the only person inside the diner is a man in an apron behind the counter stacking plates, and Tim tells him, "We're here to use the phone, sir," and hurries over to the telephone in the corner and digs inside his thingie-belt for his Titans phone card.

And the man in the apron looks at me and he looks at Tim, and he looks at me again, so I wave at him, and he says, "You young fellows been at a party?"

"We're Titans!" I tell him. "We're heroes who fight crime. And we're detectives!"

"Uh-huh," says the man, still stacking plates.

And Tim is saying into the phone, "Warden Easton, this is Agent R of the Titans, calling about 2:25 AM."

"See, we're working on a case!" I tell the man. "Both of us! What kind of pie is that?"

'Cause it has about four inches of sliced white fruit, and the crust looks crispy, and there's still half of it left on a silver platter under a glass dome, and now I can't stop thinking how I haven't had anything to eat since my snack three hours after dinner.

The man says, "That's white peach. You want a slice?"

"Yeah!" So I sit down at the counter, and the man lifts the dome and slides off half of what's left onto one of his plates while Tim keeps talking into the phone:

"...engineered his transfer to make contact with Dr. Ignatieff, though we don't know why. I'd like to meet with the doctor in the morning. I think it would be good to postpone Crossley's move for twenty-four hours. Please call Titans Tower when—"

"So you fellows put the bad guy in jail?" the man asks.

So I swallow most of the bite in my mouth and say, "He's already in jail."

"Um-hmm." And the man goes back to stacking his plates. "Seems like that would make your job a lot easier."

"But—but we _deduced _that he's trying to escape from jail! Or to connect with his old gang! Or to take revenge on a witness. Or something."

And the man turns to put his stack away and says, "Well, it's good you fellows have that all figured out."

And I picture a big white peach pie falling on my head, since I don't think I sounded like a detective at all, and for a minute the only thing to hear in the diner is Tim making another phone call:

"Hi, Cyborg, this is Robin. Kid Flash and I are— . . . No, those two aren't with us."

And I'm looking for anything else to think about, so I start to read the GUY'S DINER take-out menu, and I say, "You guys left this pudding off the dessert list."

So the man looks where I'm pointing, and says: "Black pudding? That's more like a sausage."

And now I feel even more dumb 'cause I read about blood sausages in fifteen different cookbooks, and I just didn't want to remember sausages made with blood, but now I do, and my stomach feels so queasy that I can hardly finish my slice of white peach pie.

And meanwhile Tim is saying: "Kon told me they were going to a beach; he didn't say how long. . . . Well, they won't—Cassie won't get into trouble."

"We don't actually get much call for black pudding. I tell the Mexicans it's just like _morcilla_, but even then they don't order it." And then the man points at the glass dome and says, "More pie?"

"Yes, please!" I say.

So the man slides the last quarter of the pie onto my plate and puts the platter in the sink behind him. "But we keep black pudding on the menu as a local tradition, what with the slaughterhouse on the other end of town."

So now I'm back to picking at the pie crust 'cause I don't want to be rude, but I'm afraid the man's going to start talking about bringing over the blood to make black pudding, and already I'm thinking about that, and I can't stop thinking about it, and the man _didn't even tell me anything yet_, and finally Tim taps me on the shoulder and says, "Let's go."

So I finish the pie slice at superspeed and jump up.

The man behind the counter blinks a long blink at the empty plate, and he says, "I guess you young fellows might be heroes at that. That'll be seven dollars."

So I look at Tim, who knows I don't have any money in my uniform, or even pockets to hold money, and he sighs and pulls out his card again and says, "Debit, please."

And the man looks at the card and reads off, "Agent R," and he looks at Tim, and Tim looks back at him through his mask all serious, and the man shrugs and runs the card through the machine. And then we go outside, and Tim puts his helmet back on, and I light out for San Francisco again.

We finally get back to the Tower seventeen minutes later, and even Tim's ready to go to bed, so I run up to my bedroom and pull off my mask and gloves and boots and close my eyes for just a minute, and then there's sun shining through the window, and my pillow is wet beside my cheek, but I'm still so sleepy that my whole head is buzzing. I don't know how Tim stays up all those nights with Batman.

And on top of that I'm hungry again, so I put on my boots and run down to the kitchen, and it must be real early 'cause no one else is up, and I pour a box of corn flakes in a bowl and I look out the window at the sunrise, and there's Kon!

Kon? He's floating in the air and pointing and calling, so I go over to the part of the window we can open a little, and I open it a little and say, "Hi!"

"Didn't you hear the alarm?" he asks me.

So I explain: "I can't hear anything over this buzzing!"

"Dude, that's the alarm!" says Kon. "We're all over at Alcatraz! Some prisoner they were bringing in this morning just sliced up two guards and escaped!"


	8. Tagged Urgent

Chapter 8

**Tagged Urgent**

As soon as I hear Kon say, "escaped!" I gulp down the rest of the corn flakes, and I run down the stairs and out the door and halfway across the harbor, and then I see I'm not wearing my gloves, so I turn around and dash back for them and then sprint across the harbor again and get to the shore of Alcatraz Island and wait for Kon to show up.

"Who escaped?" I ask him.

"A guy named Crossley," Kon says, and he doesn't stop to talk—he flies straight up the cliff to the prison.

And I run after him, not feeling surprised 'cause I already _deduced_ it was Crossley, but I was still hoping it was some other guy.

Kon tells me, "Vic's pissed."

"Ooh, is he mad at me? 'Cause I didn't mean to sleep through the alarm; I was out really late working on a—"

"Vic's pissed at _everyone_," Kon says, and he keeps flying up to the roof of the prison. "He's even mad at Tim."

"But—But Tim told the warden _not _to bring Crossley here yet!" I tell Kon, running up the stone wall. "What happened?"

"I don't know the whole story. What I heard is that the Marshals brought him in on their helicopter. There was a guard and a psychologist waiting—"

"Dr. Margarethe Sackler Ignatieff?"

"What? I don't know, Bart! Will you just listen? The helicopter lands, and the doc and the guard go out to meet it. As soon as the door opens, the guy slashes the guard's throat! He yanks the doctor into the helicopter, and it takes off with him shooting out the window at guards on the walls. I just flew one of those guys over to St. Luke's."

That's the hospital where they fixed my knee, so I know the surgeons will do a good job on that guard, but I also know it would have been better for him if he hadn't got shot at all. And now that I'm on the roof of the prison, I can see Raven and a medic crouching over a man lying on the gravel, so I _deduce_ that's another wounded guard, and I run over to them and ask, "What can I do?"

"_He has already started to heal_," says Raven. "_I took much of his pain._"

"Yep, signs are stable," says the medic, and she waves Kon over. "Flyboy! This one's ready for the E.R. Keep pressure on all those wounds, and try not to drop him."

"Pressure. Got it," says Kon, and he wraps his thick arms around the guard and zooms off toward the city.

And I'm jumping around in front of the medic, asking, "Is anyone else hurt? I've read eight books on emergency surgery!"

"And here I've wasted the last nine years with hands-on training," she mutters as she rips off her latex gloves. "We don't need you now, kid."

"What about that guy?" And I point to where another guard is lying on the ground next to the helipad, and as soon as I do I realize why they put a sheet over him, and why the sheet has big red spots. "Oooh."

"You could've helped twenty minutes ago," says the medic, and she picks up her equipment and walks away.

And I look at Raven and say, "I didn't mean to come late! But I never heard the alarm before, so I didn't know what it sounded—"

"_I must return to the Tower_," Raven tells me. "_All the emotions below are so intense, angry, chaotic. I do not know what might happen if I stay._"

"Yeah, you should leave," I agree. "But what can I do?"

"_Cyborg is asking where you are_."

"Um. What _else_ can I do?"

And Raven peeks out from under her cowl and says, "_You must not be afraid, Bartholomew_"—but I'd be a lot less afraid if she didn't say that in her spooky voice and then disappear in a column of black smoke.

I still don't want to see Vic 'cause I know he's all angry, but I also know I have to, and I want to find Tim, so I run down to administration ward and into the office of Warden Easton's secretary, and there's Gar leaning on the wall.

"Glad you could join us, Kid," he mutters.

"I didn't mean to—"

But Gar puts his finger over his lips and points his thumb into the warden's office, and inside we can hear a man yelling: "Right there on my screen! A message from 'Agent R' saying we should bring in Crossley first thing this morning. Tagged URGENT. I was up till midnight arranging his transfer with the Marshals."

"Warden, I never sent that email," says Tim.

"You? _This _is 'Agent R,' Stone? I asked for your best investigator, not some kid!"

"Robin _is_ our best investigator!" barks Vic. "And he never sent that email."

"So what's this?" says Warden Easton. "It hit my in-box at 10:38 last night."

"We were still working on the case then!" I whisper to Gar. "Tim was on his computer—ooh!"

"Let's keep that detail to ourselves," Gar whispers back.

And a woman's voice is saying, "...that email's in the same format as the message that asked us to fax Crossley's file to Agent R. The exact same format." And I _deduce_ that lady is the secretary whose office Gar and I are hiding in.

"And," finishes Easton, "it starts with the security code we agreed on for this case. And now you're telling me you never sent it?"

And there's no sound for what seems like a long time to me—two or three seconds at least—and then Tim speaks, but his voice sounds small and tight: "I didn't send that email. I left you a voicemail with my advice at about 2:40 in the morning."

"Voicemail?" shouts the warden. "Do you see a light blinking on my phone? Susanna, did I have any voicemails this morning?"

"No, sir," says the woman. "None."

"Warden, I called your line from a diner somewhere between here and...a secret location in Nevada."

"A 'secret location'? A phone call no one heard from a place no one can identify?"

"Watch it, Easton!" growls Vic. "You bust my balls all you want, but don't talk to my kids like that."

"Stone, I've got one man dead, my best department head missing, and two guys in the hospital because of your kids! The Marshals are down two deputies and a pilot because of your kids! So I'll say whatever I have to!"

And I know what I have to do. I run into the warden's office and zip between Vic and Easton and open my mouth—and I see their angry faces, plus Susanna's and even Tim's, and I want to run out again. But I don't! I say, "Robin called from Guy's Diner on Highway 108 in Long Valley, California! For takeout, call 760-835-2215!"


	9. Helper

Chapter 9

**Helper**

Warden Easton stares at me as if I'm crazy, and I try to look back steadily as if I'm not, and meanwhile I see that his right arm ends before his elbow, where his stripy dress shirt is sewn shut, and I know I'm not supposed to stare but—

"Check that phone number," the warden tells his secretary, so Susanna picks up his telephone and starts punching buttons, and I'm ready to repeat the number, but she's so good at remembering that I don't need to.

I look at Vic with a grin 'cause I'm being helpful after all, and he points back at me and growls, "I'll talk to you later."

So I'm still gulping when Gar saunters into the warden's office and announces, "All the units are in secure lockdown."

"One piece of good news," Easton answers. "It'll be a tough week. Some guys started to think 'escape' as soon as they heard the shots this morning."

"I did a walk-through with your riot squad," says Gar. "As a Siberian tiger. That should give your prisoners something else to think about."

"Guy's Diner?" Susanna says into the phone. "Did two...young men come in last night at 2:30 to make a phone call? Young men in...unusual clothing? . . . You don't know. . . . He went off shift three hours ago."

"But I ate all the white peach pie!" I shout. "Ask about the black pudding!"

The assistant raises her painted eyebrows at me, but she goes ahead and asks: "Do you serve black pudding? . . . No, not that hungry, thanks. What about white peach pie? . . . You had some yesterday evening, but now you're all out. All right, thanks. I'm afraid we're outside your delivery area." And she hangs up the phone and says, "I guess the little guy's story checks out."

Then Gar says, "And we all know Kid Flash couldn't make up something like that if he wanted to."

And I start to smile again, but then I _deduce_ Gar's saying I'm not that smart, so I'm about to yell, _Hey!_ But Tim clenches his fist and nods once, and I know he means _Good job, Bart_, so I calm down, and then Vic grumbles, "Try being helpful for once, Logan!"

So Gar says, "Sure, Rusty! I'll pick up all the screws and nuts when your head explodes. Which, at the rate you're going this morning, will be in about three minutes. Look: it's obvious that Crossley had help preparing his escape. How about we all get on the same side and figure out where that help came from?"

And Vic glares back at Gar, and Gar rolls his eyes, and I look at Tim, but of course I can't see his eyes, so I look at Vic, and now he's glaring at the warden, and the warden glares back, and finally Vic tells him, "Let's fix this."

"Right," says Easton. "We can start with that email. The one that made us transfer Crossley in this morning. If your Agent R—"

"Robin," says Tim.

"Robin. If you didn't send it," the warden asks, "where did it come from?"

And Tim answers, "Did you check the source code?"

"Source code?" repeats the warden, but Susanna is leaning over his computer clicking and typing, and she says:

"Well. The two messages came from different IP addresses."

So Tim almost jumps over the desk to look at the screen, and I zip around behind him, and all I see on the screen are a bunch of internet addresses and numbers, but he says, "That first message came from a Titans server, but the second—I'll have to look that up." And he types into a little keyboard thingie that he pulls out of his sleeve. "This could take a few—Robin here. . . . Got it. Thanks!" And I know he's hearing from Oracle, and I know I'm the only one who knows, which makes me feel special, even if I don't get to hear what Tim hears, and then he says: "The second message was sent from an internet cafe on Webster Street called Java Lava."

"I'm on it," says Gar, and he lifts the warden's window and turns into a green hawk and soars off toward the city.

"But how," says the warden, staring at his computer screen, "could anyone there send an email that looked just like yours, with the countersign we gave you?"

And Tim is already slipping into the chair in front of the keyboard and disconnecting what I recognize is the Ethernet cable and sticking a flash drive from his belt into a USB port, and then he says, "May I run a diagnostic, sir?"

And so all of us—except for Susanna, who goes out to her own office—we stand around and watch Tim, and watch the screen, and watch Tim some more for what must be thirty-five seconds, and finally he clears his throat and says, "Warden, your hard drive's infected with a type of spyware called Carob."

"How?" asks Easton. "We've got the best firewall software in the world."

And I'm waiting for Tim to tell him that Batman's firewall is better, but he says, "It's a new program—appeared two months ago. It travels in attachments."

"No, we've got a strict policy about opening attachments," says the warden. "The server won't even let them through unless they come from a JSO address."

And then Susanna calls in, "Warden, I just dialed your extension, and your phone's not ringing."

So the warden picks up his phone and says, "Hello? Hello? Nothing!"

"It just sent me to your voicemail," Susanna says. "Testing testing. This is a voicemail test." And she hangs up and comes back in and looks at the warden's phone, and the light is still not blinking.

And Vic and Easton look at each other.

"Damn," says Vic.

"Damn," says the warden.

Susanna runs back out to her office and shuts the door to the hall.

"Crossley's helper had a JSO address."

"And access to our phone system. Susanna!" shouts Easton. "I'll call DC. You call Regional—"

And I see she's already dialing a number on her cell phone.

"—and tell them we've got an insider. Then start the SOAP Procedure. Nobody on or off this island."

And then I _deduce_ that someone sent the warden spyware in an attachment and was reading all his email and sent him a fake email that looked like it came from Tim so the warden would get the Marshals to fly Crossley into Alcatraz early, and that same someone—or someone working with that someone—diverted the warden's voicemail so he never heard Tim's advice to fly Crossley into Alcatraz later, and at least one of those someones had to be inside Alcatraz and inside the JSO!

And Vic is gritting his teeth and snapping connections from his fingertips into the warden's phone, and Tim is pursing his lips and typing furiously on the computer, and the warden has his cell phone in his one hand and is calling someplace with a 202 area code, and I'm thinking: What can _I_ do?

And then Kon shows up outside the warden's window, and he looks in through the glass, and he says, "Am I the only one who's working here?"


	10. Secure Room

Chapter 10

**Secure Room **

So I run to the window and call, "We're in SOAP Procedure, Superboy! Nobody on or off this island!"

"Huh? What?" Kon doesn't understand. "No landing? You know there's a helicopter coming in, right?"

"Oh, grife!" So I run out of the warden's office and vibrate through Susanna's door and sprint up the hallway and up all the stairs, and I'm running around the heliport on the roof of Alcatraz and waving my arms to stop the helicopter from landing 'cause even though it has U.S. MARSHALS markings now I know that Crosscut's insider might be inside the copter, but I'm just waving my arms and not making a whirlwind 'cause the JSO people inside the copter could be good guys after all, and I'm wondering how long I should keep the helicopter—

WHOMP!

"Dude! You're embarrassing us."

Kon's thick arms are around my chest, and now that he's grabbed me his tactile telekinesis won't let me vibrate away, and I can't even wriggle around to look at him, so I calmly explain:

"Crosscut has a helper! They blocked Robin's voicemail from a café! They took the psychologist lady, and now they might be up there!"

"Uh, yeah." But Kon's not letting go, and the helicopter's right over our heads getting in position to land, and he yells in my ear, "Does Vic know all that?"

"Of course he knows! He was right there!"

"Does Robin know?"

"Yeah, he—"

"So you can calm down, right? Play it cool."

And usually I don't think very long about anything Kon says, but this time he makes me remember that a smart detective would pretend that he _hasn't_ deduced Crosscut had an helper inside the JSO so that insider couldn't know that the detective was on their trail, which Robin and I will be as soon as we figure where that trail is. So I stop wriggling, and Kon stops squeezing me, but he leaves one hand on my shoulder, and he's still using his annoying TTK, and finally the helicopter is touching down on the helipad, and the wind makes me think maybe I should have put goggles on my Kid Flash uniform, too.

And then three people come out of the helicopter. There's a lady with short gray hair and blue sunglasses and a blue suit, and there's a man with a brown crew cut and leathery skin and a bulge under his armpit that I _deduce_ is a big handgun, and there's another man with straight black hair and silver sunglasses and a thick black briefcase in each hand. Plus I spot a pilot with a short gray beard inside the helicopter, still working on the controls to shut down the motor. None of them looks like Crosscut's helper, but of course that's just what an insider _would_ look like.

As the lady walks by us, she says, "You fellows with the Titans?"

"Yes, ma'am," says Kon. "Kid Flash here was just making sure the helipad was clear."

"Oh, is that what he was doing?" asks the marshal with the crew cut, and he gives me a smirky look as he passes, and I want to say something nasty back, but Kon squeezes my shoulder and I can't think of anything to say anyway.

And by that time the warden and Vic are coming out of the stairwell, along with two guards in body armor carrying shock guns, and the warden says, "I'm Sam Easton, and this is Cyborg, head of the Titans."

"Janice Rawlins, Chief Marshal, Head of Regional Operations," says the lady, and she puts out her right hand to shake, and I wonder what Easton's going to do since he doesn't have a right hand, but then he grips Rawlins's right hand with his left, and the lady keeps talking as if that's ordinary. "Deputy Chief Marshal Frank Alioto. Marshall Gil Montez."

And each marshal nods at his name, and Cyborg and the warden nod back, and the warden says, "Frank," and the marshal with the crew cut says, "Sam," and by now they're all striding into the stairwell, and Kon and I follow after the marshal with the briefcases.

"I set up a command center in the secure room," says the warden, leading the way onto the top floor.

"Sounds good," says Rawlins. "Sorry about your guys."

"Sorry about yours."

"We're marshals, Warden," Rawlins snaps. "We don't give up looking for anyone until we see a body."

"Then let's get to work," says Easton, and he leads Rawlins and all of us into a big room on the floor above his office. It's got a big table and white boards on the walls like other meeting rooms, but it's also got no windows and armored electric cables, and a whole wall of television monitors showing Alcatraz from a dozen different angles, and four people in Alcatraz uniforms working on different computer controls.

Kon goes up to Vic and asks, "Do I need to be here? I could be out flying and helping Cassie find—"

"You sit down until you get an assignment," Vic orders, so fierce that I sit beside Kon in the seats along one wall.

And everybody else is finding seats around the table or standing near the screen, and Susanna the warden's assistant brings in a stack of papers that she hands to one of the guys in uniforms, and the marshal named Gil is pulling a laptop and another machine out of his briefcases and hooking them up, and the helicopter pilot comes in and sits down in one corner, and then Susanna leaves, and the guards shut the thick doors after her and lock them tight—and I look around and don't see Tim. For half a second I'm really worried, but then I _deduce_ that Tim's still back at the warden's office fooling around with the warden's computer.

Kon is muttering real low to me: "I don't get why Vic's so pissed at me today. But what good can we do stuck in here?"

"What can we do? We can listen for clues about what Cross Cut's up to," I tell him, "and use those to figure out where he's going." Since Kon hasn't been working on this case as long as I have, I explain: "_Anything_ might be a clue, and Robin says part of being a detective is spotting what's important—Oooh!"

And right then I realize how the Titans need a detective at this meeting, and since Tim is off playing computers, _I _can be that detective, and I can gather the facts and spot the clues and _deduce_ where to find Cross Cut. I already helped to figure out how he wanted to come to Alcatraz and almost why he did, so how hard will the rest of this case be?


	11. Watch and Listen

Chapter 11

**Watch and Listen **

"First thing," says Warden Easton, and he has one of his staff guys pass out the photocopies that Susanna brought in, and I recognize them as the same papers I was reading last night at the JLA archive. "All our files on Eli Crossley were incomplete. The Titans delivered these pages to me this morning."

And I zip up beside the warden and say, "See, what Robin and I found out was—"

"Son, it'll go faster if we read," says Deputy Chief Alioto, and I know that's not true, I can talk much _much _faster, and the only problem is he can't listen fast enough. But Vic points to my chair, so I sit back down and pout.

Chief Marshal Rawlins looks up from the last page and says, "So Crossley had a link to Baumhaus."

And I stand up again to tell everyone about how Cross Cut met the psychologist back when she had another name, but the warden is saying, "And that case links him to Margie Ignatieff. You probably all know that she testified against Baumhaus."

The three marshals say they remember, which leaves me with nothing to tell them, so I slump back in my chair and grumble until Kon whispers, "Stay cool, will you?"

Then Vic says, "Somebody working with Crossley from inside the JSO diverted communication between the Titans and Alcatraz last night. Our people are tracing that back right now."

Easton nods and tells the mashals, "That person got us to ask your office to bring Crossley in early this morning. We've got surveillance video of what happened next."

One of the technicians clicks on her keyboard, and the biggest monitor changes to a dark picture of the Alcatraz roof with a clock at the bottom that says **06:17:45**, and I'm _deducing_ that it came from early this morning, and that's why the picture is so dim and foggy, when suddenly a helicopter fills the screen from the top. And I jump up and say, "That's a Haumann model S-140, developed for the Air Force in—"

"It's _our_ chopper, son," growls Alioto. "We know what kind it is."

And Vic shakes his head at me and says, "Watch and listen." Which is totally unfair 'cause I _was_ watching, which is how I recognized the helicopter, and the rotors are so loud that there's nothing to listen to, and I've read a lot of stuff that could be useful, and you should not tell your only detective to be quiet, and—

"There's Margie," says the warden. "Dr. Ignatieff."

So I missed seeing the helicopter land, but now I'm paying attention 'cause a lady with short wavy brown hair has walked into view at the bottom of the screen, and the pilot's window opens, and the lady and the pilot start talking.

The warden adds, with his voice kind of strained, "Margie came in early this morning to oversee the intake. After we changed the schedule."

I watch the pilot hand Dr. Ignatieff some papers, and she hands him a paper coffee cup, but the helicopter blades are still too loud for us to hear what they're saying to each other. Then Dr. Ignatieff walks around the front of the helicopter to the right side, which is where the Haumann model S-140 has its big door for letting people in and out.

Rawlins asks, "Any footage from the opposite angle?"

The tech shakes her head, and the warden grumbles, "We've got more cameras in our budget request for next year."

"We know how it is, Sam," says Alioto.

"Who else was inside that helicopter?" asks Vic.

"Marshal Spencer West. Marshal Virginia Parley. Pilot Salman Mirani," says Rawlins, and I'm imagining that I'm reading those names so I'll remember them while she adds: "Spencer flew in from Texas with Crossley. Parley and Mirani are based with us."

"Ginny and Sal," says Alioto, still watching the screen.

And now it's **06:24:13**, but we can't see what was going on then 'cause the picture shows nothing but the helicopter with its blades still twirling until there's a little movement toward the top of the screen when the door slides open. And twelve seconds later the blades speed up again, and the helicopter lurches into the air and rises out of the screen, and now we see a prison guard lying on the helipad with a big red puddle coming from his throat, and the wind from the helicopter is spreading the puddle across the roof, and over the roar of the rotors we hear the _Rataratarat! Rataratarat!_ of an automatic weapon.

"Other cameras caught the gunshots out of the helicopter—from a distance. And one tracked it flying west into the fog," says Easton.

Kon clears his throat. "I could hear someone shouting just before the takeoff. I couldn't make out the words, though."

I'm proud of Kon for his superhearing, and for figuring out the shouting might be a clue, and then I remember that Vic's always fooling around with sound stuff, and I go, "Oooh! Cyborg—"

But Vic gives me the same look as before while he pops the cover off a jack in his arm and pulls out a wire, and he tells the technician at the keyboard, "Let's run the audio feed through my system. I've been working on a program to wash out background sound." Which is just what _I_ was going to say if he'd only let me.

So we wait a minute while the technician rewinds the video and Vic runs his program, and then we see the helicopter on the roof with nothing happening again, but the blades don't sound so loud this time, and there's a kind of mumble in the background, and then suddenly we hear someone shrieking, "No! No! Don't take me! Help! Help!"

And then the helicopter takes off, and we see the dead Alcatraz guard, and the gun goes _Rataratarat! Rataratarat!_ at other guards even louder than before, and we can hear the scream of "No! No! Don't take me! No!" getting farther and farther away.

Suddenly no one in the room is talking at all, 'cause we're all thinking about Dr. Margie Ignatieff and the marshals and the pilot trapped on that helicopter, and Cross Cut shooting the guards, and I try to think about how to solve the case—but I can't think of anything! I can't think of any clues, or any leads, or any trails! All I can think about is Dr. Margie screaming from the helicopter, and now I don't feel like a detective at all, and I just want to run and run as fast as I can 'cause I know l can do that.

So I yell, "I have to go to the bathroom!" and I run straight at the locked doors and vibrate through and head for the warden's office to talk to Tim.


	12. Rock Paper Scissors

Chapter 12

**Rock-Paper-Scissors**

Susanna yells, "Stop!" when I vibrate through the door into her office, and whips out a pistol, but by then I'm already past her going through the door to the warden's office, so I call back, "Sorry!" and burst in on Tim.

He jumps a little, which is kind of funny 'cause the batguys are always sneaking up behind people, but I don't have time to tease him. "Robin, Robin!" I say. "You told me a detective has to pay attention to _everything_, but there's _too much to pay attention to!"_

"Crud," Tim answers, but he's not even looking at me.

He's taken the warden's computer apart into fourteen separate pieces, not counting the screws, and he has wires hanging out of both sleeves, and he's staring at the screen, and he's got his hand on a memory thingie that he stuck into one of the ports, and I _deduce_ he's still trying to find the spyware inside there.

But I'm talking! _"Robin!"_

"I'm listening, Kid Flash," Tim says. "What did you see? From the beginning."

So I tell him about the video of the Haumann model S-140 helicopter landing on the roof at **06:18:27**, and Dr. Ignatieff coming out and talking to the pilot and giving him the cup and going around to the door on the other side. I can't see Tim's eyes through his mask, but I know he's still looking at the screen, so I look at the screen, too, and it says:

Copying…

Copying…

COPIED TO E:

Then Tim jerks the memory thingie out of the port, but a seventieth of a second before that the screen says:

ERASED FROM E:

"Crud," says Tim again, and he sticks the memory thingie back into what's left of the computer. "Keep going."

So I tell Tim about the helicopter door opening, and the helicopter taking off at **06:24:25**, and then the machine gun shooting, and the _screaming_, and how it was really loud and scary!

And Tim is just watching the screen say:

Copying…

Copying…

Which is _so_ annoying that as soon I see the word "COPIED" I yank the thingie out and slap it down on the desk and say, "Are you even _listening?"_

Tim looks down at his memory thingie, and at the screen, which now says:

COPIED TO E:

CANNOT ERASE

INSERT E: TO ERASE

Tim looks up at me with a grin and says, "Thanks, Kid Flash."

So I smile back and say, "You're welcome! For what?"

"For disconnecting the memory stick before the Carob code fragmented and overwrote its critical details. Now I can boot up my sleeve drive and analyze the code through a sterile OS."

And I nod 'cause I know what all of those words mean even if I don't know how they go together. Then I remember why I came to find Tim: "So I told you all about how Cross Cut escaped in the helicopter with Dr. Ignatieff and the Marshals, and how those guards got shot, and…I don't see anything to deduce!"

"Who was flying the helicopter?" says Tim.

"The helicopter pilot, duh! The Marshals said his name is Salman Mirani. Ooh, can we look him up in Batman's database? Maybe he's—"

"When the helicopter took off," Tim asks, "was he flying it?"

"I don't _know!" _I say. "There weren't enough cameras, and the blades were spinning, and—ooh!"

I run back through Susanna's office and into the hall and down to the secure room and through the double-locked doors and I shout, _"Who was flying the helicopter?"_

And the pilot with the beard who brought the marshals whirls around and points his finger at me and says, "I know what you're implying by that, you little peckerwood!"

"You do?" I say, and I gulp, and now I really do need to go to the bathroom.

But then I hear Special Marshal Alioto growl, "Lay off the kid, Bukowski. You know we have to ask if Sal went rogue."

"There's no goddamn way," says Bukowski, turning back around, and I grab my chance to zip over to my chair beside Kon and sit down quietly. "Every morning we chopper jocks play rock-paper-scissors to decide who takes first flight. This morning Sal came up first, but it could just as easily have been me or Harry."

Vic points to the video screen and says, "So was your man flying the chopper when it took off?"

"Sure," says Bukowski. "This Crossley guy had Margie as a hostage, so Sal was stalling for time. He's gotta be."

Vic nods and looks around. "Anyone else in there know how to fly it?"

The young marshal who's been setting up a laptop and other machines on the table clears his throat. "Ginny Parley was taking helicopter lessons. She told me about a month ago. She didn't say what model."

"Damn. Another possible," grumbles Alioto.

"And we don't know what training Crossley got when he was on the Mongoose Squad," says Easton. "For all we know, he could've been at the controls himself."

So I'm thinking, _Thanks for the suggestion, Tim!_ 'cause now we're have _three_ people in the helicopter who could be secret double agents, and we haven't even talked about—

"If I could have your attention," says Chief Marshal Rawlins, standing by the young marshal with the laptop. "Gill has his equipment set up, so we're ready to begin the office's standard pursuit procedure."

And the young marshal Gill pushes a button on one of his machines, and it lights up, and a big blue square appears on the wall, and I _deduce_ that we're going to see the JSO's best criminal-hunting in action! The square turns yellow with a stripy pattern at the top and bottom, and in the middle in red letters it says:

C

H

A

S

E

"This is our CHASE system," Chief Marshal Rawlins says, and pushes a button, and the screen changes so now there are more words in blue:

Clues

Habits

Associates

Suspicious

Events

I don't think Tim has the CHASE system since he's never talked about it, so I sit up and watch, thinking that I'll be able to teach him something when he's done playing with the warden's computer.

"The C in CHASE stands for Clues," says the Chief Marshal—which actually I figured out for myself, and I'm pretty sure Tim already knows to look for clues.

"The H in CHASE stands for Habits," says the Chief Marshal. "What are our target's regular behaviors, hangouts, patterns of movement?" I know what habits are, and I know what the rest of CHASE stands for 'cause it's right up there on the screen, and I'm wondering when she'll get to—

"The A in CHASE stands for Associates. Our target's relatives, friends, past co-conspirators, business—"

There's a knock at the door. "Oh thank god," mutters Kon.


	13. Habits

Chapter 13

**Habits**

One of the guards looks through the peephole and says, "Another kid in a mask."

"Ooh, that's Robin!" I shout. "I mean, Agent R!" I zip over and squeeze in beside the guard and tug on the handle. But the stupid door is locked, so I flip things and jiggle things and spin things until the door finally moves.

Tim walks in with his mask hiding his eyes and his black cape swirling around him, and the marshals all stare, and Alioto mutters, "Son of a gun—he _does_ exist."

"Anything?" asks Vic.

But before Tim can answer the chief marshal says, "Young man, we're in the middle of a presentation."

"The CHASE system," says Tim, glancing at the square on the wall. "I believe what I've found belongs under C, Chief Marshal Rawlins."

The chief marshal is too startled to talk 'cause Tim did that trick where he knows your name before you tell him, so he has time to go on: "Warden, that spyware's been on your computer for three and a half months—at least."

"Damn," says Easton.

"At a random time between five and six o'clock each day, it sent a copy of every new file on your computer under 256 kilobytes. That means almost every email, most attachments, _all_ passwords."

"So we have to find out where those transmissions went," says Rawlins. "Gil, that's your—"

"They went," Tim keeps saying, "in packets to different email addresses, on an eleven-day cycle. Our insider could access those addresses from any computer. But at least 64% of the time, those email boxes were accessed from computers at the Java Lava on Webster Street." And before the chief marshal can give any orders, Tim adds, "We've already sent someone there."

"And we need to get word to him," says Vic.

"I'll go!" says Kon, and he must _really_ want to leave since he gets out the words even before I do.

But Vic waves for Kon to sit back down. "Kid Flash. Go."

So I sprint through the door and out of Alcatraz, and across the bay, and up into the city, and then I run around Golden Gate Park till I remember what street Tim said Java Lava was on, and I dash even faster to Webster Street. I find Gar outside on the sidewalk, staring at the storefront and rolling his eyes dramatically, which is the way he likes to do things.

"The insider was using this place the whole time!" I tell Gar, and I look through the window inside 'cause the insider could be inside there _right now_, but I can't see much because the glass has posters taped all over it and it's kind of dingy besides. "Who's inside? Is it open? What can I do?"

"You can let me use your communicator," Gar says. He can't carry one when he changes shape, so he's always borrowing someone else's or looking for a phone.

So I unhook the communicator from my wristband, and Gar pokes the buttons and says, "Vic? Still got your head screwed on? . . . I got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Java Lava's crack workforce is so stoned out of their minds that they can't remember who was in there an hour ago, let alone last night."

_What?_ I think, and I make a _What?_ face, but Gar waves me off, so I run into the café so fast that no one can see me and I dash behind the counter and I grab all the papers and notebooks and file folders and little pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT message slips and run back outside, where Gar is still talking:

"Of _course_ I asked to look at their records. Their records are a total mess. Out of order, huge gaps—I think they used most of 'em for rolling papers."

I think Gar is a great guy, but a detective knows that _anything_ can be a clue, so I plop the pile down on the sidewalk behind his back and I start reading one paper after another, which is harder than I thought 'cause it's all just names and dates and times and people didn't use their best handwriting and they really _are_ out of order—

"Maybe 'Agent R' can spot more in that mess than I could," Gar says. "I just left everything exactly where I found it in case he wants to take a look."

Uh-oh. I grab every paper and folder and notebook and pink slip, and I run back into the café and put everything back behind the counter again. It's all exactly where I found it if we count "behind the counter" as exactly where I found it. Then I dash back out to Gar and lean against the storefront as if I'd been standing behind him the whole time.

As the door closes behind me, I hear one of the two guys running the Java Lava say, "Dude, did you just see that? The papers, like, _blinked_."

And the other one says, "Wow. You must have some strong shit."

Gar turns around, still talking to Vic. "The good news? Oh, yeah. I was able to convince the dudes not to smoke my hair. Beast Boy out." He snaps the communicator shut.

"So what now?" I ask. "What can I do?"

Gar shrugs. "Nothing, Speed Racer. You can't chase down a dead end."

"But the insider came here 64% of the time!" Now I'm being dramatic, jumping around Gar and waving my arms. "We're Titans! We're working on a case! We don't just give up because of bad luck!"

"It's _not_ bad luck," Gar says. "Believe me, our suspect chose this place because he knew no one working here would remember customers' faces—or even what day it was. So he could make a habit of checking email here—"

"Ooh—habit! We can use the CHASE method!" And I dash back through the city and across the water and up the wall of the prison down to the secure room and over to the corner where Vic is standing. "We found a habit!"

Vic has one finger in one ear, and his regular eye is focused off in the distance, and I _deduce_ that he's listening in on his communicator. So I yell:

"The insider—he lived right here in San Francisco! What can I do?"

Vic takes his finger out of his ear and looks down. "You can go meet Gar on Pier 47. He says you left your communicator behind."

So I slap my forehead and run back down the wall and back across the water to that pier, and a minute a green stallion gallops up and trots over to me and opens his mouth and spits out my communicator in my hand.

"Eeeeyuck!"

"Next time don't forget it," says Gar. "And be glad I didn't carry it any other way." And he turns into a green eagle and takes off for Alcatraz.

So I hold the communicator way away from me and shake it really, really fast so it dries off, and then I sniff it, which is a big mistake, and then I snap it back into my wristband and open the channel in my ear to make sure it's still working. And the first thing I hear is Cassie's voice saying, "Starfire, this is Wonder Girl. Level Z. I need you at the Air Traffic Control Station in San Alfredo."


	14. Flight Paths

Chapter 14

**Flight Paths**

_Level Z_ is Titans code for "no danger," and Vic told us to say that _first_ with Kory or she might come flying in shooting off her starbolts everywhere.

So I know Cassie's okay, but she still needs some sort of help, so I take off running around the waterfront and across the inner bay and up the bluff and along the highways to San Alfredo and then up a hill and over the chainlink fence to where there are half a dozen whirling radar dishes and one flat concrete building.

I dash inside and find Cassie in the big central control room, with her hands on her hips and an annoyed look on her face. Two men and one lady in office clothes are looking back at her, also annoyed, and all around the room are more men and a couple of ladies looking at computer screens and radar displays.

I slide to a stop in front of Cassie with my arms folded, and I snap at the people, "What's the problem here? We're working on a very important case!"

Behind me Cassie mutters, "I asked for _Starfire_."

One man recovers faster than the other two, which makes me _deduce_ that he's the boss, and he says, "Like I told the young lady, sonny, we don't show high-security material to just anyone from the Boys and Girls Club."

"But we're Titans! I'm Kid Flash! This is Wonder Girl! And…we're Titans!"

I look back at Cassie, and she has her hand over her face. "And this is _why_ I asked for Starfire."

"No way," says the lady, shaking her finger at me. "I had a Titans poster on my wall in college, and you're at least a foot too short to be Kid Flash."

"That's my cous—"

"And Wonder Girl's hair is _black_."

"That was just a dorky wig she used to—"

"Imp!" snaps Cassie, and I jump as she grabs the back of my neck. "Sir, ma'am, one of the leaders of our team should be arriving—"

"Frank!" calls a lady from one corner. "My screen shows a bogey headed right for us!"

"What?"

There's a streak of gold in the sky outside the windows to the south, and everyone in the room ducks, but then the gold disappears and in fourteen more seconds Kory strides in, her armor glinting with the lights from all the screens.

"Oh, my," says Frank the boss, and he's not recovering so fast now.

"What's the trouble here?" Kory asks.

I start to explain, but I feel Cassie's hand squeeze my neck, so I let her go first. "We're trying to find the flight path of the helicopter that took off from Alcatraz—"

"A Haumann model S-140—ow!"

"—and they say we don't have enough security clearance."

"Didn't you show your I.D.'s?" Kory asks, and now I keep quiet 'cause I still don't know where my Titans card is and it probably still says IMPULSE anyway.

"I did," says Cassie, and Kory turns back to the managers, gazing down with her spooky green eyes.

The managers squirm, and the second guy says, "You see, Ms., um, Starfire, we don't know what a Titans I.D. is _supposed_ to look like. You know?"

"Wonder Girl and Kid Flash wouldn't lie about such things," says Kory, which is sort of like Gar saying I couldn't make up a story, but sounds better. "Now do you have the flight paths for us?"

"Yes, ma'am," says Frank the boss. "Sandy, bring out this morning's readout over Alcatraz."

"Sure thing," says the other man, and he goes to a printer and brings back a paper and lays it on the conference table, and I _deduce_ that they had that all along, but before I can complain Frank points to a dotty line on the map and says:

"Here's the blip you're looking for: a Haumann S-140."

And I grin and look at Cassie and Kory in case they want to say what a useful detective I'm becoming, but they're just frowning at the map.

"It was flying due west," says Kory. "But where did it go?"

Franks taps two more spots, two and three centimeters out over the Pacific. "Here's where its transponder was turned off. And here's where it went out of range of our radar."

"Still heading west," says Cassie.

"We need to call Tempest!" I tell Kory. "And Lagoon Boy! And the Coast Guard! The Haumann S-140 has a flight range of 640 kilometers, and Japan is eight thousand kilometers away!"

"Let me show you something else," says Leslie, and she starts laying down more papers across the table so they make a big map of central California. "Ten minutes after your chopper disappeared off the radar, we picked up an intruder over Point Reyes heading east-northeast. No transponder signal. Same radar profile, approximately. Same airspeed."

I'm trying to _deduce_ what _two_ Haumann S-140s mean, and still wondering about how to contact Lagoon Boy, when Cassie says: "So our pilot flew out of radar range and then doubled back."

"Looks like it," says Leslie.

"But that path disappears," says Kory, leaning over the maps to study all the dotty lines.

"The pilot could be staying close to the ground," Frank tells her. "Trying to keep below our radar, probably. That flight path seems to pick up again _here_, when the 'copter has to climb over those…two big hills."

"And Beale Air Base picked it up _here_," says Sandy. "Because they've got, um, big radar dishes." And he blushes, too.

Kory looks up. "Is there something wrong?"

The two men shake their heads, but they can't talk.

"Honestly!" snaps Leslie, and she rolls her eyes at Cassie, and Cassie rolls her eyes back, and I look at Kory, but neither of us can _deduce_ what's going on.

Leslie edges the men aside and draws ovals around three or four dotty paths on different maps, paths that all line up the same direction. "It looks to me like your chopper was headed east-northeast toward Nevada. Once it got to the Sierras, it stayed low, and we don't have the coverage to find it."

"Then _we_ will," says Kory. She gives Leslie her great big smile. "Thank you."

Now Leslie blushes as she rolls up the papers and hands them over. "No problem. I, uh, always wanted to help the Titans on a case."

"Let's go," Kory tells Cassie and me as she strides out of the building. "I'll call Cyborg, and we'll all meet on Saddle Mountain."


	15. Titans Together?

Chapter 15

**Titans Together? **

When all of us Titans are going to meet someplace, my job is to run there right away and activate the homing signal on my communicator so everyone else will know exactly where to go.

Which is easy, and makes me happy to have an important job, but then I'm waiting waiting _waiting_ for everyone else to come. I try thinking about our Cross Cut case, but I don't see anything to _deduce_, and I can't find any more stuff to stick into the CHASE system, and my stomach is noticing how long it's been since I ate breakfast, and—

Kory and Cassie come in for a landing beside me.

"Finally!"

"Bart, you set off your signal _six_ minutes ago," says Cassie.

"I know!"

Kon flies in from a slightly different direction, with Tim hanging from his arms, and they land on another part of the ridge. "What are those papers?" Tim asks the girls.

"Ooh! Those are maps from Air Traffic Control!" I say.

Cassie's busy saying, "Hi," to Kon while Kon is saying, "Hey," to Cassie, and it looks like they want to say a lot more, so I run over and take the pages from her arms and hold them up one at a time for Tim.

"See, this is where the Haumann model S-140—it says that somewhere, in code—where it took off from Alcatraz, and then it flew onto this map, but by then the transponder thingie was turned off, but Cassie figured out that it came back from the ocean and flew over here—no, wait, this one's upside-down—"

"Can I look at them all?" says Tim gently, so I let him take the maps and lay them out on the flat ground. I run off to fetch rocks to weigh down the papers so the wind doesn't blow them away, but my running makes them blow away, so I run back to slap them back down on the ground.

"See, here's where the paths end," I say, pointing to a spot just west of Saddle Mountain.

"Mmm," says Tim, and his finger traces the line past us into Nevada. He taps his communicator and makes his voice even lower than when he talks to bad guys and says: "Yes, sheriff. My name is Draper, and I'm working with the U.S. Marshals. This morning, have you received any calls about a low-flying helicopter? . . . About 7:20? That's very helpful, thank you. Our office will be in touch if we need anything more."

Tim reaches into his utility belt and pulls out what _looks_ like a regular pencil, but I _deduce_ that it's a bat-pencil that turns into a laser or dartgun or something. Tim uses it to mark a spot on the map, then moves his finger to a big gray patch with square edges marked USAF RESTRICTED SPACE - LEVEL D.

"Ooh, what's that?"

Tim taps his radio again. "Oracle?"

"Hi, Oracle!" I call.

Tim waves at me to shush. "We're tracking a low-flying helicopter close to AFB 51. You got any useful intercepts this morning?"

I don't hear Oracle's voice, so I bend down close to Tim's head while I'm shaking and poking my communicator, but all I hear is Tim saying, "Nothing? So it didn't go that far. Oh?" His fingers goes back along the flight paths all the way to California and a little starry shape labeled CARSON RESERVOIR. "Thanks, we'll check that. Robin out."

"What? What?" I ask Tim, jumping back to my feet. "What's Carson Reservoir? Did the helicopter turn back?"

"Incoming! Clear the deck!" A green hawk swoops past us and lands on a boulder. "Vic's about twenty seconds out." So Kory and Kon and Cassie step back.

Vic comes down—WHOMP!—and the ground shakes. The patch of grass where he lands gets kind of torn up even though he bends his knees.

"So what have we got?" Vic asks, and everyone looks at Tim.

"The helicopter carrying Cross Cut, Dr. Ignatieff, and the Marshals crossed into west-central Nevada," Tim says, gathering and folding the maps. "It doesn't look like it went as far as Air Force Base 51—I'm thinking it landed in the desert. Also, twenty-five minutes ago some fishermen reported a helicopter dumping something in Carson Reservoir."

"Ooh, a Suspicious Event!" I say. "Maybe Cross Cut dropped the machine gun in the lake so no one could find it!"

"Maybe he dropped one of the marshals," says Tim, and suddenly working on this case is less fun.

"All right then," says Vic, clanging his hands together. "Two squads: one chases the chopper, the other flies back to the reservoir."

"Cassie and I can head back," says Kon. Which is kind of weird, since he usually wants to be in front

"No, you're on different squads," says Vic. "And hands to yourself."

Kon says, "Yes, sir," which he never would have said back before we were Titans, and I squint to see if he's really Kon or if he's Match again, and I notice Cassie isn't letting his hand go.

"It's all right," she tells Vic.

"No, it's not," says Vic. "We're working now, and I want everyone's mind on this case."

"What is the problem?" Cassie snaps. "You've been grumbling at Superboy all morning."

Vic frowns. "I should grumble at you, too. You two were out last night until almost three-thirty."

"I didn't know we had a curfew," Cassie says, and I gulp 'cause I didn't know either, and Tim and I were out working on this case, but then I get that she's being sarcastic. "We just flew out to a beach."

"What if your mother had called and asked me where you were?"

"She knew where I was—_I_ called _her_! I even gave Kon my cell to talk to her!"

Kon nods, looking a little embarrassed. "She did."

Vic shakes his head. "I don't want love affairs on this team."

"But, Vic—" says Kory.

"You and Dick were different," Vic tells her. "Older. Mature."

"And all over each other," says Gar. "Come on, metalhead! Conner and Cassie are, what, sixteen? Of course they're gonna fall in love!"

"Yeah?" says Vic. "And how'd that work out for _you_, greenie?"

Suddenly Gar's smile turns flat, and his nostrils flare. He's actually quiet for eight seconds before he says, "Fuck you, Stone." Then he turns into a green cheetah and races down into the trees.

I jump up to catch him, but Tim grabs my wrist and shakes his head.

"Aw, shit. Gar! I didn't mean it like that!" Vic takes a couple of steps toward the trees and then looks back up at Kory. "We need him for searching the reservoir."

"Go find him," says Kory. "Meet us there. I'll handle things."

Vic nods and takes one of his big jumps, and we see him soar over the stand of trees and out of sight, and I _deduce_ that he's going to meet Gar at the bottom.

Kory turns and looks at the rest of us.

"Someone should call the Marshals," Tim says quietly.

"I know. Kid Flash, Superboy, and Robin, you track the helicopter. Cassie, you come with me."

"Really, Cassie and I _can_ work together," Kon says. "I swear, it's not a problem—"

"Not now," says Kory, with a glance down to where Vic has disappeared into the trees.

And I don't know what's going on, and I look at Kon and Cassie, and they don't know what's going on, either, and I look at Tim, and even _he_ doesn't know. He just walks over and lifts his arms for Kon to grab him and says, "Let's go."


	16. Just Us

Chapter 16

**Just Us**

Kon grabs Tim and starts to rise, but before they're too high Tim points across the mountains and calls, "Kid Flash, run to Route 208! We rendezvous at the convenience store in Yerington!"

"Okay!" I put on a real burst of speed and then switch on my communicator. "I'm here at the Fastmart! Wow, it's hot! This town's even smaller than Manchester. Ooh—I know! This must be where the helicopter flew over!"

"That's right," Tim says over the radio.

"Should I interview witnesses? Should I look for Clues? Should I watch for Suspicious Events?"

"Low profile," Tim tells me. "We'll be there in three minutes."

So I'm waiting waiting waiting _again_, and this time all I have to think about is how Tim isn't letting me be a detective even though I'm way ahead of him, and how now it's even longer since I ate breakfast, and how there's a big neon hot dog in the Fastmart window, and—

"Finally!" But this time I don't say that—I hear Kon and Tim say it as they land beside the store, and they both laugh as if they _knew_ what _I_ was going to say, but I act mature and instead of giving them the satisfaction of hearing me complain I just pout.

Tim asks Kon, "You got your Titans card?"

"Of course," says Kon, as if everyone always knows where his Titans ID is. "We come all this way to buy something?"

"Yup," says Tim. "Can you go in and buy six power bars and six bottles of water?"

"And three juice boxes!" I say. "And a box of frozen waffles!"

"Bart, I _saw_ you eat breakfast an hour ago," Kon tells me. "How're you even gonna _eat_ frozen waffles out here?"

"You can toast them with your heat vision."

Kon rolls his eyes and ends up looking at Tim.

"Actually, a toasted waffle sounds good," says Tim. "Unless you're not sure you can control—"

"I can control—no, you're just trying to manip—fine, I'll get your damn waffles! But you guys'll owe me big time. Big time."

While Kon goes inside the Fastmart, I ask, "So what do we do?"

"We stay in this shadow," Tim says.

"'Cause we're being 'low profile'?"

"Because it's really hot. Let me work on your communicator."

I snap it out of my wristband. "Don't sniff it."

So Tim can't help sniffing it because he always _has_ to know, and his nose wrinkles so much that he has to smooth his mask back down before he pulls the Air Traffic Control papers out of some secret pocket in his cape and hands them to me. "Do you remember maps as easily as other things you read?"

"Sure!" I say, but I'm not so sure, and I look at the top map, and I try to _deduce_ what Tim wants me to do, and I read all the little names and I look at the lines and squiggles in between, and I think it would be easier if it had some sort of _story_.

So then I imagine that I'm a Haumann model S-140 helicopter zooming over the desert, over Wabuska and Walker River and Highway 95 and Sand Mountain and— "Ooh! I could land here at the Air Force Base 51!"

"You mean the helicopter could have landed there?" Tim shakes his head as he keeps twiddling with my radio. "Oracle said the base radar didn't pick up any unknown 0aircraft."

"Maybe it did, but an Insider got that report classified."

"Nothing's _that_ classified. We have to search the desert."

Kon comes back out carrying a white plastic bag with a smiley face on it, and I run to help him unpack, and pretty soon we're all chewing on power bars and sipping juice behind the Fastmart. Kon finds a concrete block and uses his TTK to make all the dirt fly off it and lays down one waffle and zaps it with his eyes.

Tim tosses back my communicator. "I set it to Titans channel 3."

"We got only two channels," says Kon, not looking up.

"Not anymore," says Tim. "So if you want to call any of the others, remember to switch back to 1 or 2 first." I _deduce_ that he's come up with a radio frequency for _just us_, which is the sort of cool thing Tim does.

I snap my communicator back in and reach for the hot waffle, but Kon grumbles, "First one's for someone who _didn't_ already have cereal."

Before I can argue, Tim says, "Bart, you'll take point," which means I'll be in the lead, which I like. Tim taps the map with the hand that I notice is _not_ holding a waffle. "We have to sweep this whole triangle, so think about your landmarks."

I picture myself running past Fallon and the Lahontan Dam and that bend in Highway 50, and I don't stop until I smell the third waffle toasting. "Cool!" I tell Kon. "You toasted a lightning bolt on it for me!"

"I was trying to make an S," says Kon, which is silly since none of my names starts with S, but it tastes just fine.

"Ready to go?" says Tim, taking back the maps. He stows the last three water bottles back in the plastic bag and hands them to Kon. "We'll think better now that we're not starving or dehydrated."

"That something you learned from Batman?"

Tim smiles. "From someone else. Let's go." He takes out his bat-binoculars and holds up his arms for Kon to lift him.

"Maybe that's why Cyborg's so cranky this morning," I joke into Titans channel 3 as I dash off. "He didn't get his protein shake!"

"Actually, Vic started to sound upset last night," I hear Tim tell Kon. "When I called in, he asked if I knew where you and Cassie were."

And Tim's microphone picks up Kon's voice, softer: "We just went to the beach."

"So you said."

By this time I'm five miles northeast of Yerington, running zig-zag to one of the Indian reservations and then back to the river.

"Vic should know Cassie and I can take care of ourselves," says Kon. "We got powers, you know?"

Most of the land is flat, but there are some dips and gullies that might be deep enough to hide a helicopter, so I dash back and forth to check them, too.

"Vic's not worried about someone attacking you. He's worried about what the two of you might do when you're alone."

"Oh. Well, I don't like to kiss and tell."

I cross a highway and go, "Shyeah! Kon only told us forty-six times about his groupies, and how he kissed all those beauty-pageant girls, and—"

"Bart," says Tim. "You're thinking out loud, and your microphone's on."

Oops. I run another mile. "Can Kon hear the sounds from your earpiece?"

"Superhearing, dude!" Kon shouts at Tim's microphone.

Oh. "Sorry!" I cut through what I remember is called an _arroyo_.

"No, man, you're right. I used to brag a lot. But Cassie's not like those—like most of those girls. So I don't feel so right boasting about how we made out."

"You made out with Cassie?" I yell as I zip up a little ridge, looking down both sides at a bunch of prickly pear cactus, genus _Opuntia_.

"Bart," says Tim. "Kon just said he doesn't—"

"Yeah, we were kissing, on the sand," says Kon. "Then we flew over the ocean. Cassie came close to me, and we started kissing again."

I see sunlight glint off something in a far-off hollow, so I curve that way.

"Cassie wanted to fly down near the water, so the waves were crashing over us. Like we were bodysurfing in the air, you know? And we were still kissing, and sort of twirling in the—"

"Ooh! I see it!"

"Yeah, it's quite a picture," mutters Tim.

"Not that! I see a Haumann model S-140!"


	17. No Touching

Chapter 17

**No Touching **

"Don't touch it!" says Tim.

"I'm not touching it!" I snap back.

"Don't even go near it! It, uh, might be booby-trapped."

Oops. I zip back up to the ridge. I was only near the tail looking for Clues, but I didn't stay long enough to spot any cigarette butts or shell casings or pads of paper with itineraries scratched very faintly on the top sheet.

"Send up a dust devil so we can spot you," says Tim.

So I run around and around and around until a column of dust is swirling up in the air, and I close my mouth tight and vibrate and run to the other side of the hollow, but some dust particles still get in my eyes because there are just _so many_ of them, and for a second I wish I'd kept wearing goggles.

In my earpiece Kon says, "There he is," and before I finish blinking blinking _blinking_ he zooms up and drops Tim on his feet beside me.

"Good work, Bart," says Tim, and already he's scanning the helicopter through his bat-binoculars. "Hmmm."

"What? What? Can I look?"

"No," says Tim, which is what he always says about his binoculars.

So I ask Kon what he can see 'cause he doesn't need binoculars.

"Maybe someone in one of the front seats," says Kon, squinting at the smoky glass windshield. "Not moving."

"Don't you have X-ray vision yet?"

"I'm working on it!"

Tim sets off along the edge of the hollow, so Kon and I follow, and he asks, "Bart, did you run close to the back rotor?"

"No," I say.

"Did you?"

"No."

"Did you?"

"All right, yes, I did! Before you told me to stay away!"

"Fine," says Tim. "I just needed to know who left the big footprints back there. There's another set of marks leading from the door up to here." And he kneels down so suddenly that Kon and I almost trip over him, and two steps in front of us are a whole mess of footprints that come up from the helicopter and head off—

"Ooh! A trail!" I dash off into the desert, following the footprints but staying carefully to one side, but after forty paces I hit a stretch of sandstone, and the footprints disappear. I run around and around the edge of the stony part, but I don't see the same footprints start up again anywhere, so I have to run back and report, "I lost them."

"We'll pick up the trail later," says Tim. He's snapped some sort of bat-camera onto his bat-binoculars, and since it still has two lenses I _deduce_ that it's a stereographic camera that makes 3-D pictures.

"Ooh! Can I use—"

"No." Tim clicks a photo of the footprints, and then he sets off down toward the helicopter, and Kon and I follow again. Tim doesn't act worried about booby-traps, so he must have figured out there aren't any, but I can't see how, and I start to wonder if he just _told_ me there might be booby-traps to keep me from touching—

"Hmm." Tim kneels down again, a few yards from the helicopter, and he scoops one of the brown spots lying in the middle of the footprints into a little glass vial, and he slips that vial back into his belt and pokes a button on his sleeve and says, "Sample 1. Possible blood drop from exit path." So I _deduce_ that he's recording a message for himself, and now I want a detective-recorder, too.

Tim reaches the helicopter, and takes more pictures of the ground right under the door, which is open just a crack, and he pulls off his cape and spreads it on the ground with the yellow side up. Then he pulls two little plastic packages out of his belt and rips one open and starts to unpeel this big translucent balloon—

"Ha! You got bat-rubbers!" says Kon.

What Tim is technically called a "condom," but he's not using it the way the books say you should, and instead he's stretching it out to fit over his boot like it's the _other_ kind of rubber.

"They're not 'bat-rubbers,'" Tim grumbles as he steps onto his cape with the boot in the condom and rips open the second little package. "Batman calls them 'high-tensile, sterile latex envelopes'."

"And he trained you to put them on your _feet_?" says Kon, still smirking.

"Yup." Tim pulls pale latex gloves out of a sleeve pocket and tugs them on over his regular green gloves. "To avoid contaminating crime scenes."

"Ooh, then can I have some?" I ask.

"Sorry, Bart. They don't make any big enough."

Kon snorts. I start to pout, but then I look at Tim with the two pairs of gloves and the bat-rubbers on his boots and his cape lying on the ground, and I think that being a detective can make you look pretty dorky.

"Okay, Kon," says Tim. "Slide open the helicopter door, but don't touch it with more one fingertip."

"Can do." Kon uses his TTK, and the door slides open, and suddenly we all have a clear view inside the helicopter. Most of the floor is covered with blood that's dried enough to turn sticky, with clumps of little black flies moving around on it, and there are spatters of more blood on the ceiling near the door, and even more blood on the wall over by the back seat.

There's a man strapped into the pilot's seat and slumped over, and even though his back is to us we can see crimson has soaked into his green shirt and his dark pants, and dribbled onto the floor around his boots.

"Oh, man," says Kon, and he steps back with his face squinched up.

Tim is taking lots of pictures, and I watch to see what Clues he's finding, and I spot steel handcuffs and shackles lying in the dried blood, except they're in pieces, with the cuffs sliced right through, and I think _Cross Cut!_

Then Tim hoists himself up through the door, stepping on his tiptoes, trying to make his bat-rubbers land on the little spots on the floor where there isn't so much blood. He gets to the pilot's seat and touches the man. "Stabbed in the throat—a sharp, curved blade straight into the right carotid artery."

"He used his thumbnail!" And since the carotid artery carries blood to the brain, cutting it is really really bad.

"Marshals badge around his neck. Looks like he might be South Asian."

"Pilot Salman Mirani," I remember.

"Jeez," Kon mumbles, and he looks like he might throw up, and not just ordinary throw-up, but _super_ throw-up, with bits of power bar and waffle going _everywhere_. And I don't want to be around for that, even though it might be fun to watch on video later.

"We need to report our GPS coordinates and what we've found," says Tim.

"I can do that!" I say, but Tim shakes his head.

"Let Kon make the call."

Kon looks sheepish and says, "I, uh, left my radio beside my bed this morning."

"I can—"

"Then take Bart's radio," says Tim. "Fly up to get a better signal."

I'm almost ready to argue 'cause Tim's not letting me do _anything_, but then I _deduce_ that he wants to give Kon an excuse to get away from the crime scene, which _is_ kind of gross, and then maybe Tim and I can really start working on this case, so I snap my communicator out of the wristband and hand it over.

"Jeez, what's that smell?" Kon says, holding it out between two fingers.

"Gar put it—"

"I don't want to know." He launches himself straight up until he's almost out of sight.

"Can I climb into—"

"No." Tim snaps a photo of a handgun that's been sliced in half and kicked in a corner, and he scrapes up a couple more blood samples for his belt, and he tells his radio, "Switch to channel 1 or 2 first, remember?"

Then Tim peers at every little button and switch on the dashboard like he's lost something, and I'm still stuck outside, and I'm not doing _anything_, and I'm about to tell Tim that this is _not_ how you learn to be a detective when he grabs a thick gray binder sticking out of a pocket under the co-pilot's seat and tosses it to me. "Take a look at this."


	18. What Do You See?

Chapter 18

**What Do You See? **

So I look. I really look. But I don't see any bloody fingerprints or cigarette ashes or scribbled phone numbers or other Clues. "It's just the pilot's operating manual. All 546 pages, including 15 that say they're 'intentionally left blank,' which _aren't_ blank because they _say_, 'This page has been—'"

"Bart, how did they turn off the transponder?" Tim asks.

"Oh. That's on page 255. Look at the end of the left-hand arm rest of the pilot's seat."

Tim peers over the dead pilot, and stretches past the man's body without touching it, and feels around that arm rest, and calls, "All I've got is a cup holder and a cup of coffee. You sure the switch is here?"

"No, the switch isn't _there_," I tell Tim.

"Bart!"

"But the cup holder means that _this_ Haumann model S-140 was built in the last three years," I explain. "So the transponder thingie is in the central column under the dashboard. See that little metal door, with the key sticking out?"

"Oh. All right then."

"See, if this were an older Haumann model S-140, the switch would be on the far right side of the dash—"

"I got it, thanks." Tim opens the door, touching it only on the edge, and peers inside. "Hmm."

"What do you see? What do you see?" I'm bouncing up and down on the sand.

"Nothing," says Tim. "No blood, no scratches." He takes stereographs of the little metal door and the central column and the dashboard, and then he turns and takes pictures of the pilot's body and the cut in his neck and even the cup holder. He hangs his camera back on his belt and starts gathering samples in his little vials, muttering into his recorder thingie, "Sample 4. Pilot's wound. Sample 5. Liquid in paper cup at pilot's left hand. Hmm."

"What do you see? What are you looking at?" I try to _deduce_ what Tim's deducing. "Why don't you tell—"

Suddenly Kon is hovering beside me with his back to the helicopter door. He drops my radio in my hand and says, "Vic's still growling at me."

Tim steps back out to the sunlight. "Uh-huh. And what about the case?"

"I gave Vic the GPS readings. He said the Marshals will send a squad from Reno. Also, they found a body in that lake—the woman who helped bring Cross Cut from Texas—"

"Marshal Virginia Parley!"

"Gar's still looking for others."

"I bet he's being a shark!"

"He may not find another body there," says Tim, swinging back down to the dirt.

"No, really! Sharks can smell _one_ drop of blood in _two thousand_ gallons of water!"

Tim shakes his head. "Crossley may not have killed both Marshals. The other one—"

"Marshal Spencer West!"

"Yeah, Bart. He might be working with Crossley." Tim strips off his extra gloves and rubbers and squeezes them into a little latex ball. Then he lifts his cape off the ground and straps it on his shoulders as he heads up the slope.

"So Marshal West was Cross Cut's Insider?" I ask, following Tim. "But who logged onto the computers at Java Lava?"

"I don't know yet," says Tim. "It's all still possibilities. We've got three sets of footprints here—"

"So three people got off the helicopter," I _deduce_.

"Or two people got off, and a third met them. All we know is that one person was being pulled along by the others."

So I stop and look at the ground and look and _look_ and, sure enough, some of the footprints are all messy—they're feet stumbling, or being pulled sideways, and even some places knees dragging on the ground. And as I look, I think of the voice I heard screaming on the videotape: "No! No! Don't take me! No!"

"Yow!" I catch up to Tim and Kon as they reach the top of the hollow. "So how do we find Cross Cut? How do we rescue Dr. Ignatieff? All three sets of footprints go onto the rocks up ahead, and they never leave!"

"What about tire tracks?" says Tim, still walking.

"Oh, I saw some of those. Ooh! The three people might have gotten into a vehicle!"

"You think?" says Kon, and I'm about to explain to him how I _deduced_ that when I realize he's being sarcastic.

"At least _I'm_ working on this case," I grumble at him. "_I_ have my radio. _I_ looked at the crime scene."

He turns and snarls. "And _I'm_ not bothering Tim with stu—"

"Kon, you still have those water bottles?" asks Tim.

"Yeah." Kon holds up the plastic sack from the Fastmart.

"Let's all have a drink now," says Tim. "We dehydrate fast out here, and that can get in the way of clear thinking."

So Kon grunts and passes out the bottles, and I drink all of mine, and I do feel a little better, especially after I burp. Kon holds out his hand for my empty bottle, so I put it in his palm, and he uses his TTK to make it collapse into a tiny plastic tube, which is cool and which I _deduce_ is his way of saying he's sorry a little.

By this time we're up on the rocky part of the desert, and Tim looks around. "When you were up in the air," he says to Kon, "did you see any highways nearby?"

Kon points. "Over that way, behind the ridge."

"So they could have had a vehicle waiting here, and landed the helicopter nearby, all out of sight of the traffic."

"Here are the tire tracks!" I yell from a far corner of the rocky place. And I watch Tim close up his water bottle and hand it to Kon, and Kon loop the plastic bag back on his wrist, and Kon pick up Tim under the arms, and _finally_ they fly over to me. "See!"

"Uh-huh," says Tim, laying a little ruler beside the tracks and snapping three more stereographs before he takes his camera apart and stows the pieces in his belt. "Old tires, shallow treads. Width shows they were on a full-size pickup truck, probably old as well. And it must have picked up a coat of dust out here."

"Truck—old—dust—got it!" I say, and I dash off, following the lines in the dirt around the ridge, and sure enough they head for an asphalt highway half a mile away, and when I get closer I see the tracks curve and merge onto the road. "He headed southeast!"

"Good," Tim says through my radio. "Half-speed, Bart. We have to keep up."

So I slow down, which means the few people on the highway can actually see me coming up behind them, and I wave to a couple of kids in the back of a station wagon before I pass, and the road goes over three arroyos, and in the distance I can see some sort of town, and I _deduce_ that might be where Cross Cut headed when I hear Tim's voice in my ear, saying: "Bart! Come back! They turned around!"


	19. Turned Around

Chapter 19

**Turned Around**

"Turned around? I didn't see anyone!" But really I wasn't looking for anyone 'cause I wasn't thinking about Cross Cut _turning around_, so I slide half a mile along the shoulder till I stop going southeast, and I dart across the road and start running northwest, and I don't even bother to wave to the station wagon when I pass because I'm going too fast for anyone to see, and up ahead I spot Tim and Kon standing on the side of the empty highway.

"Where's Cross Cut?" I ask. "I don't see him! Did you let him get past you?"

"Now we didn't 'let him get past us'," snaps Kon. "We spotted more tracks where they turned around."

So I _deduce_ why Tim is crouched down beside the road, looking at the dirt, and I get down on my hands and knees, too, and sure enough there are tire tracks here that look a lot like the tire tracks before, though I wish I could use Tim's detective camera to be sure.

"Okay, okay! This Clue shows that Cross Cut's truck went back onto the highway in the other direction. But he won't throw us off his trail that easily!" And I dash off to the northwest..

"Kid Flash!" Tim calls through the radio. "Don't get too far ahead."

"I'm still going only half-speed!" I answer, and quietly I think the problem isn't me getting too far _ahead_ but some other people lagging too far _behind_. 'Cause by now I'm already to the spot where the truck got on the highway in the first place and zooming past.

I don't like how Cross Cut fooled me by turning around, so this time I don't wave at anybody; I just look for dusty pickup trucks with worn tires and three people inside—or maybe more than three people, because I _deduce_ someone could have stayed in the truck while three people got off the helicopter. Or maybe only two people because Cross Cut might have Dr. Ignatieff stuffed in a bag or something.

So really, I think as I get ready to curve right with the highway, I'm looking for _any _sort of dusty pickup truck, or even just tire tracks—

Tire tracks! There were tire tracks on the other side of the highway back at that curve, and I know that as a detective I should check out every Clue, so I make a long curve to the left off the highway and out for a quarter-mile and back towards the asphalt, and I spot a big loop of tracks in the dirt, and they look _exactly_ like the ones before, with the same worn tires and the same distance between them.

"Bart's off the road," Kon's voice says in my radio. "I can see his dust trail. 'Beep beep.'"

"Kid Flash, you okay?" asks Tim.

"Yeah yeah yeah! He turned around _again_!"

"What?"

"He turned around again, guys! We have to go back!"

"Stay where you are!" Tim barks. "We'll be there in twenty seconds."

So I'm waiting waiting _waiting_ until Kon swoops down with Tim in his arms, and then I point to the ground and say, "See, it's a Clue! Cross Cut turned the truck around again!"

"Riiiight," says Kon, and he rolls his eyes, but Tim is squatting and peering at the dirt.

"Looks like the same tracks all right," Tim says. "Good eye."

So now I'm all happy, and I grin at Kon, and he looks baffled, just like Dr. Watson, who's a good friend and all but _not _a detective.

Tim is creeping toward the highway, following the tire trails, and he gets to the edge and turns his head this way and that, but this is a really quiet part of the highway, and only one car has come along all the time I've been here.

"The truck could have gone in either direction," says Tim. "Turned into either lane."

"Was Cross Cut confused? Ooh, I bet he got his directions mixed up!"

"No, these guys are pros," TIm says. "They're expert in pursuits. They did two turnarounds to throw us off. So now we've lost more time, and we have to split up."

I look at Tim, and I know that Kon or I have to carry him 'cause he can't run or fly or anything, but if I carry him that means both detectives are going in the same direction, so I _deduce_ Kon should carry Tim, and since all this time Cross Cut is getting further away I shout, "I'll take the southeast!" and I run.

I hear Kon's voice over Titans channel 3: "Jeez, he forgot to take you."

"So _you_ carry me," says Tim.

"Dude! That means Bart's on his—" And then the radio goes quiet.

"Hello? Hello? Come in!" I shout, but even then I don't stop running because I'm working on case.

Finally Tim comes on: "Okay, Kid Flash, keep your eyes peeled for—"

"For dusty old pickup trucks, I know!"

"They could have turned off at any exit," says Tim.

"I know, I know, I know!"

"I'm calling the others."

"Good," says Kon.

"Because we need all the eyes we can get," Tim says quickly.

But I'm thinking that we don't need more eyes when we have a detective who can look practically everywhere at once, and at every exit I zip down and run around to see what's there, and the first few are just one tiny road going off into the desert with no pickup or dust trail or anything, but then there's a storage facility, and then a propane storage tank, and then a gas station and a diner and a carwash—

"Back on channel 3," Tim's voice says in my ear. "I reported to Cyborg."

"Is he still pissed at me for no reason?" Kon says.

"Maybe he's pissed at you for going off with Cassie," says Tim.

Around the diner and the gas station are lots of pickup trucks, so I choose the one that's dustiest and look for Clues, but it's only two years old and has new tires, so I chase another one that's old and rusty for two seconds before I see it's so clean it's still dripping from the carwash, and then I see an old, dusty _car_, and I wonder if Tim _deduced_ wrong about the bad guys being in a pickup truck.

"Cassie's a big girl," Kon is saying.

"That could be the problem," says Tim. "You guys protect yourselves?"

"Shyeah!" I say since both Cassie and Kon are _Titans_, so they can definitely protect themselves, but Kon says:

"Are you giving me 'The Talk'? Because I could drop you anytime I want."

I run up alongside the dusty old car to look through the windows, and the driver sees me and veers off, which is kind of suspicious, but at the same time I see the car doesn't have the turning ratio to make those tracks, and I—

How come a truck that's all rusty was at a carwash? I _deduce_ that whoever drives a rusty truck doesn't usually care how dirty it is—unless he's trying to hide something!


	20. The Guy

Chapter 20

**The Guy **

I run back to the carwash, and the wet, rusty pickup is already gone, but I can see the trail of droplets on the asphalt, so I run after it as the trail gets thicker because the dribble hasn't had so much time to dry and then thinner because there must be less water dripping from the truck.

"This is important, Kon," Tim is saying.

"I know it's important! Just because Batman gave you bat-condoms—"

"They're not 'bat-condoms'!"

The trail of droplets disappears, but by that time I see that the only place where the driver could be headed is the La Fuente Spring Regional Airport.

"Did Batman give _you_ 'The Talk'?"

"No, he doesn't talk about things like that. I didn't even know what those things in my belt were until one day in health class. But for your sake—for Cassie's sake—if you ever need—"

"I know what a drugstore is, Boy Wonder."

I dash around the airport parking lot, and I don't see the old, rusty pickup anywhere, but then I spot an employee parking lot, and I run around those cars, and I still don't see the pickup, but then I peek into an old hangar full of old equipment and _there's the truck!_

And there's a _guy beside the truck_, cleaning out the back! And he's all _suspicious_, with his overalls and his ball cap and his sunglasses on a string around his—okay, he doesn't look suspicious. In fact, he looks normal, but of course that's exactly how a suspect would _want_ to look, especially if he was the Insider.

"Robin!" I whisper into my comm. "Superboy! I got him!"

"Can't copy, Kid Flash," says Tim.

"I got him!" I say, a little louder.

"Who?" asks Kon.

"The guy! I got him!"

"Who?" they both say.

"The guy with the truck!" I yell. And maybe that's a little too loud 'cause the guy starts to turn around, but I zip behind the corner of the building before he can look. "He's in the hangar beside the employee parking lot beside the La Fuente Spring Airport."

"Where?" asks Kon.

"In the hangar beside the employee—"

"That way," says Tim, and I _deduce _he's pointing, and I know Superboy and Robin are on their way, which is good because now the guy in the coveralls is looking around again, and hurrying around to the cab of the truck, and—

"He's trying to get away!" I tell Tim.

But the guy hasn't figured on _Kid Flash!_

"Stop where you are!" I shout. "I'm from the Titans!" But I know the guy's not going to stop 'cause villains never stop when you tell them, which is why they're _villains_, so I run right up to him and I hit him with my high-speed right five times—_Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!_

But by the second _Wham!_, along with me hitting him, _he's_ hitting _me_ with his left, just as fast and as hard as my right, and I'm going _Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!_ in my head, and I start to jump back so it doesn't hurt so much, but even before I do I feel myself falling backwards, and then I'm lying on the concrete floor of the airport hangar, except now it seems to be whirling around enough to buck me off.

"Ow," I say.

"Stay back," says the guy, pointing down. "This is government business."

I _know_, I think. Why aren't _I_ sayingthat?

The guy's eyes jump up to something outside the hangar, and I tilt my head back to see a streak of black and red and green in the sky.

In my ear I hear Kon say, "Bart's on the ground! I see the guy!"

"Set me down," says Tim, and the streak slows until I can see Kon and Tim gliding over the desert beside the employee parking lot, and then Kon drops Tim, who hits the ground stumbling and almost falling and then running while Kon speeds up again and roars toward the big wide opening of the hangar. He comes in just under the top and dives like a missile on the guy with his two fists out front, but just as he hits the guy's own two arms fly up and smash into Kon's chin, and Kon goes _KaWANNNG!_ through the steel roof of the hangar and out of sight.

Which is not what I expected.

So I _deduce_ that this guy isn't just an ordinary guy in airport coveralls, and I turn to warn Tim, but he's already sprinting into the hangar, snapping his bo-thingie together, and all I can yell is "Watch ou—" before Tim runs up to the guy and smacks him on the outside of the left shoulder with his stick.

The guy's left arm snaps out in a nasty jab to the side, but Tim's in front swinging his staff—wham!—against the guy's right knee, and the guy makes a vicious karate kick into the air while Tim hits—klock!—the guy right in the center of the forehead. The guy's head snaps forward, and he's already standing on one leg, so he starts to pitch forward, too. And Tim jumps back half a step and grabs the guy's arm as it passes him on the way down and twists it.

"Ow," says the guy into the concrete floor, and I feel good enough to sit up and look down on him.

Tim says, "Sir, we are authorized deputies of the U.S. Marshals Serv—"

_WHAGANNNG_—Crrrrash! Another hole appears in the roof, about twenty paces back, and something smashes down into whatever equipment is being stored back there. A second later Kon roars around the corner of a dismantled airplane with his eyes blazing and one fist raised and his mouth going, "Raaaaah!"

Kon sees Tim holding the guy on the floor. He stops short and says, "Well, all right then."

"Hold this guy—don't punch him, just _hold_ him—with your TTK, okay?" says Tim.

"Okay, okay," grumbles Kon, and I can see his T-shirt and jeans are ripped a bit from going through the roof twice, but only his pride is really hurt. He's upset since the guy punched him back just as hard as he punched, which is kind of funny except the guy punched _me_ back just as fast as _I_ punched.

Kon puts one hand on the guy's neck where Tim points, and Tim goes back to arresting the guy, and I see some of the airport managers come rushing out to the hangar, so I jump up and run to meet them, just a little wobbly.

"Titans!" I say. "Working with the U.S. Marshals! We subdued the villain with minimal damage!"

"What the heck are you kids doing with Manny?" says one lady.

"And what'd you do to my roof?" says a man.

I'm about to explain that he should ask "Manny" about the roof since _we_ didn't do anything, except maybe Kon, when there's a streak of golden light in the sky, and Kory lands in the employee parking lot, and behind her comes Cassie, and then a green hawk swoops down to the asphalt and turns into Gar, and finally Vic plummets down onto the desert and jumps a couple more times to land beside Kory.

And the Titans are together.


	21. Good Titan, Bad Titan

Chapter 21

**Good Titan, Bad Titan**

The old guys and Cassie stride over to us, and all the airport people quiet down 'cause Kory and Gar and Vic are _celebrities_. Even the guy called Manny starts looking nervous.

"Okay, guys," Vic says, looking at Tim. "What's the situation?"

"We suspect this man is an accessory in the kidnapping of Justice Department employees," Tim says, not really to Vic but to the airport people.

"He's a villain!" I explain. "With powers!"

"You gotta be kidding! That's Manny Apugnacio, on our maintenance staff," says the lady. "He's been working here all day."

"Actually," says one of the airport men, "I tried paging Manny for an hour this afternoon, and he never answered."

"See? See?" I say, jumping around.

"All I need is one phone call," growls Manny.

Tim looks up at Vic, and Vic nods to Tim, and Tim steps toward the airport managers and asks, "Who has a cell phone?"

And I'm thinking, _No!_ This guy's one of the _Penetrators!_ Remember how he hit me and Kon? That's _just_ the sort of thing that a _villain_ would do.

But a lady takes her phone off her belt and hands it to Tim, and he squats beside Manny and asks what number he wants to call. As the guy says the numbers, I see Tim's fingers flicker on the side of his belt. Aha! I _deduce_ that Tim's typing the digits into his computer, and they're going to Oracle, and she's tracing the call, and the authorities are on the way to this guy's contact, and we'll catch the rest of the gang and rescue Dr. Ignatieff since Tim is only _fooling_ the guy about letting him call anybody.

But then Tim's other thumb slowly punches numbers into the cell phone, and he looks at the screen and he holds it in front of the guy and says, "Is that right?" And I'm thinking, _No! Villain! Come on! _But Tim doesn't hear me, and after Manny nods at the number Tim hits the SEND button.

Tim holds the phone to the side of Manny's face, which is totally smirking now, and the guy says into the phone: "Mongoose."

Behind the guy Kon is trying not to let Manny notice as he waves a hand at Tim and whispers, "It's a recording." So I _deduce_ that Kon's using his superhearing, which is cool, but he really could be flying the guy off to jail and chasing down his confederates.

"Mongoose," Manny says again, louder.

Kon whispers, "The line's saying it's disconnected," and Tim nods.

"Mongoose, dammit!" shouts Manny.

"Sir!" says Tim. "I can dial for you again, or I can tell you what I think you're trying to do."

The guy glares at Tim, but he doesn't ask for another call, so Tim says, "You've got a metagene that makes your body respond to any punch with an equal and opposite counterpunch."

So that's how the guy walloped me and Kon! Okay, so now we know how to take him! Well, we could figure something out. Meanwhile, Gar nods and says, "Cool power," and all the airport people whisper about how they can't believe Manny has any powers at all.

"When your ability appeared," Tim continues, "someone from the federal government approached you to join a special law-enforcement squad."

The guy doesn't say anything.

"Did you get a codename?" asks Gar.

Finally Manny murmurs, "Waveform."

"Waveform!" says Gar. "I like it!"

The airport people start whispering again, surprised that they work beside someone with a _codename_. But Gar gives the guy a thumbs-up! So I zip over to his side and hiss, "Stop being so nice! He's a _bad guy!"_

Gar disappears, and I'm about to brush something off my shoulder when I see it's a green sparrow and hear Gar's voice peeping, "Haven't you read about 'good cop, bad cop,' Kid?"

_But nobody's being bad cop!_ I think, but then I realize that _I_ can do that, so I move into Waveform's sightline and I snarl and I grind my right fist into my left palm and I ignore Kon staring at me as if I don't know what I'm doing.

Tim is saying, "The people who contacted you asked you to go underground—to be a sleeper agent. You never heard from them again until sometime this week. You were carrying out their assignment when Kid Flash found you. Am I right?"

Oh, yeah. I found him right in the middle of his _villainy_. Guess he's sorry now.

But Waveform says nothing.

"Who contacted you, sir?"

The guy just glares.

"What was your assignment?"

Nothing.

"Hey! Robin asked you a question!" I yell right in Waveform's face.

Vic puts a big metal hand on my shoulder and growls, "Keep it cool, Kid Flash."

Tim stands up to return the cell phone to the manager lady and then turns back to Waveform, hands on his hips. "Mr. Apugnacio, I know you're trying to keep secrets for the government. But you need to know what's really going on. I'm sorry to tell you that your manager went rogue. Your assignment didn't actually come from the JSO."

I hear the rattle of a helicopter coming from the west, and as it descends toward the employee parking lot we can all see it says US MARSHALS on the side.

"If you want to help your country, and I think that's what you set out to do, then you should tell us who contacted you, so we can find them before they hurt anyone else."

Manny looks like he's thinking hard, so I _deduce_ my bad-cop look is getting to him, and I grind my fist more.

"You saw the blood, didn't you, sir?" asks Tim.

Manny swallows but says nothing.

"All over the helicopter!" I say.

Manny stares at the Marshals' helicopter as it lands. "I don't see blood."

"Not that helicopter! The one out in the desert! How could you miss the blood?"

"I didn't go into the desert," says Manny, and I think he almost sneers at me.

I sneer right back at him and take a step forward and—

"Is that the perp?" a man shouts from over by the helicopter. I glance over my shoulder and see Bukowski the pilot pointing at Manny. He starts striding toward us. "Is that the fuckass who sliced up Sal? Where's he keeping Margie now?"

And Marshal Alioto is running after Bukowski, but the pilot's coming faster, and he's reaching for a pistol in his hip holster, and suddenly Kory steps in his way and says, "This man is a prisoner, and he's cooperating."

"Yeah, yeah!" says Manny. "See, I got a phone call this morning from a man saying, 'Mongoose'—that's the codeword they told me. Nothing else, no name—sorry! Man said to leave my keys in my truck in the lot, and to come back after lunch and clean it up. Then he hung up. I never heard the voice before. He sounded Anglo, I guess—that's all I know, I swear!"

So that's how "bad cop" works.


	22. Cold Trail and Hot Pepper

Chapter 22

**Cold Trail and Hot Pepper**

I take another peek at Bukowski, and he's stopped flat, staring up at Starfire and then staring down at his gun as if someone else put it in his hand.

Manny's still talking, gazing over at the airport people: "See, that's why I checked out for an hour—to clean my truck. It took longer than I thought because…of the blood. Lotta blood."

"Any cuts in the upholstery?" asks Tim.

"Yeah, a bunch. And a…a slice through one of the windows."

A-ha! That proves Cross Cut was in his truck! So I _deduce_ that Dr. Ignatieff must have been inside it, too—and I start hoping that wasn't her blood.

"That call this morning—did you receive it on this phone?" Tim holds up a different cell phone, and Manny's eyes get all wide since he never felt Tim take it off his belt, but he nods. "Okay, we'll try to trace it." Tim pulls another thingie that looks like a cell phone with less buttons out of one shoulder pouch. "You record everything, Cyborg?"

Vic nods, holding up one finger that I know has a microphone at the end.

Tim hands the cell phone and the other thingie to Marshal Montez. "Here's Mr. Apugnacio's phone and a recording of everything he just told us." He turns back to Manny. "You cooperate with the Marshals now, sir. It's important, and it'll help."

Marshal Montez gets Manny to his feet while Deputy Chief Marshal Alioto holds up his badge and calls out, "Who's security for this airport?"

The lady with the cell phone steps forward.

"We'll need to use your facilities to talk to our suspect," says Alioto. "And we'll need records of every flight out of here today."

"You got it," she says. "There were only four."

"More likely, our suspects _drove _away," says Tim. "Do you have security cameras on the parking lot?"

The lady snorts. "We've got three cams and only one that's reliable, so we use it for the boarding area. I'll get you all the footage we have." She walks briskly off to the terminal building with Montez and Manny and the rest of the crowd following.

Alioto steps over to Vic, and Tim and Cassie join them, and most times like this I go hang around with Kon and Gar and Kory, but now I'm working on this case, too, so I stand beside Tim, listening.

Alioto says, "We found two of our unaccounted-for."

"Uh-huh," says Vic. "Sorry about that."

"We're still searching for Marshal West and Dr. Ignatieff—and Crossley. There's a dive squad at the reservoir, and forensics at the chopper."

"We already collected samples!" I say. "I mean, Agent R did."

Tim makes a face at me and turns back to Alioto: "I'll send your lab my results for confirmation. If it's any comfort, I'm pretty sure that Mr. Mirani wasn't conscious when his throat was cut."

"Yeah, I saw," says Alioto.

"What?" I say. "How'd you guess—"

"Hey, Kid Flash." Cassie grabs my arm and tugs me aside with a whisper: "Back when Robin was talking to the suspect, you looked like you had to go to the bathroom."

"No, that was my 'bad cop' look," I explain quietly. "I don't have to go to—well, I _didn't _until you said something!"

So I run way out in the desert and water a Buckhorn Cholla cactus, and while I'm out there I decide to run all the way around the airport in a big circle one way and then the other way, looking for Clues like new tracks from dirt bikes or SUVs, since it would be just like Cross Cut to try to escape into the desert instead of using the air _or_ the roads, but I don't find anything, so I run back to the hangar.

As I come close, I spot Kon up on the steel roof, glaring down, and it takes me just a second to _deduce_ that he's fixing the holes with his TTK and his heat vision.

I find Tim on the ground and tell him, "I couldn't find a trail!"

"It's gone cold here," he says, "and I need to get those samples into the lab."

"I'll carry them!"

"No, I need to be there to do the analysis," he says, and Kory walks over and hoists him into her arms.

"So what can I do?" I ask Vic.

"We're heading back to the tower," says Vic.

Gar turns into a green lemur and jumps onto Tim's shoulders, and Kory blasts off into the air. Vic waves for Kon to come down and tells him, "You carry me, Superboy, so we can make the best speed."

"He should pull me along, too," says Cassie. "I can't fly as fast as him."

Vic makes a face, but he nods, and Superboy takes one of Cassie's hands and one of Vic's and takes off after Kory.

And four seconds later I'm in the Tower kitchen waiting, waiting, _wait_—

"_Hello, Bartholemew."_

I jump and whirl around. "Hi, Raven! Um. How are you?"

"_I am well. I sense that you are unsettled."_

"No, no, totally settled!" I don't want her to feel bad.

"_I refer to the deaths of the marshals,"_ says Raven. _"And to how the culprits remain at large, and Dr. Ignatieff unrecovered."_

"Are you doing that mind-reading thing?"

"_I have followed the conversation on the radio and prepared for your return. Now I must leave for a moment."_ Raven raises her arms, and black smoke billows, and she disappears, and I wonder if _she_ has to go to the bathroom.

I see a gold streak in the sky from the east through the window I left open this morning, and Kory arrives with Tim in her arms. Gar hops off to turn into a green tiger and stretch out his back. "Thanks for the lift, guys. I remember when they served peanuts on these flights." Then Kon arrives and sets Cassie and Vic down gently, but Vic still doesn't look happy, and—

Suddenly there's another column of smoke. Raven steps out of it carrying four flat white boxes. _"I ordered two vegetarian and two with meat. I hope that will please everyone."_

Gar licks his chops and says, "Rave, it looks grrr-_eeat!"_

"Oh, I could have run over to pick those up," I tell her.

"_Thank you, Bartholomew, but it is important for me to do ordinary things a young person would do."_

Yeah, I think, the pizzeria folks must have thought it was totally ordinary when Raven showed up in a column of smoke.

"_Besides, _I _know where my Titans charge card is."_

Was that a zing? From _Raven?_ Before I can figure that out, Cassie starts to open the top pizza box, and I smell sausage and hot pepper, so I pull a two-liter of Zesti from the fridge and pour some for everyone and pass out the glasses and run over and grab the slices from that half.

Cassie blinks as she finishes opening the box and says, "Okay, I guess Bart's served himself. Who wants pepperoni and black olives?"

"_That was for Timothy."_

"Ooh, where'd he go?" I look around the kitchen, but Tim's done the Batman thing again and disappeared, and I _deduce_ that he took his samples up to his science lab, so since I'm already done eating I grab a slice of pizza for him and run it upstairs before it gets cold. Because there's something I want to ask him in private.


End file.
